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Ask HN: Could Netflix allow you to rent a colocated DVD player that streams?

1 points| meeks | 4 years ago

Hypothetically Netflix rents you a multidisc DVD player at their HQ and rather than mailing you the DVD they insert it for you and you can stream it back to your device. You pay more for more simultaneous DVD and faster swapping speed. Then they can effectively stream the full library of content and get around streaming rights. Is there any obvious reason why this wouldn't work?

5 comments

LinuxBender|4 years ago

I don't have an answer for your question but it sounds like you are describing something like SlingBox [1] which is a device that lets you stream your entertainment center at home to your remote devices. If you had a DVD juke-box [2] or something like it then you could load it with rented movies.

I have no idea if SlingBox is compatible with all the DVD juke-box style DVD players. One could probably ask them what is known to work.

[1] - https://www.slingbox.com/

[2] - https://www.amazon.com/Sony-DVP-DVPCX777ES-Disc-SACD-Changer... [example, not tested]

johnfc2021|4 years ago

As you say, they are streaming the content and therefore there are streaming rights involved regardless how they stream the content.

Consider for a moment that Netflix offered that service, how would you choose the menu options on that DVD? You'd have to wade through all those copyright warnings and adverts you can't skip. You'd have to pay more for the power consumption of the DVD player. Consider if every consumer had this service, how big would their warehouse have to be to store all the DVD players along with their collection of DVDs to play?

It would be a logistical nightmare for Netflix.

version_five|4 years ago

There was that company years ago that streamed over-the-air television that had an individual antenna for each customer in order to basically make the same argument you're suggesting. They were sued and lost I believe

Edit, See: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aereo

asojfdowgh|4 years ago

probably prohibited by most dvd licenses, plus would require actively using DRM circumvention outside of the context of making private copies

Probably no beueno

meeks|4 years ago

Why would it circumvent DRM? I'm assuming they would use the same DVDs for rental they currently use (similar to physical rental DVDs used by Blockbuster in the past).