The videos are brought to my house, the mailer envelopes make it simple to send the DVDs back, I can see how many movies I rent over time and thus figure an average cost per DVD (after about 100 rentals, our cost has been about $3.50 per movie.) The collaborative filtering has worked for me, suggesting some GREAT movies I had never heard of, or might have never thought to rent. Also, you get e-mails telling you what is on the way and to confirm that they got your selections back. The turn around time is still a day or so more than I would consider ideal, but as it works out to be cost effective, that's okay.
The service is very efficient, though all of it is done by e-mail. I love Netfix and I would love to see this model applied to other products. I think Netflix will continue to grow and prosper. I can't understand why anyone wouldn't join unless they don't watch movies.
Netflix (and the studios) had some production problems early on. Some DVDs wouildn't play, some were fine at the start then technologically fell apart in the middle. Now both the DVDs and the Netflix service are flawless.
But they're at the very top end of the price range that will retain me as a customer. I think they're locked in to $19.95 for several years, so they'll have to make it on volume.
