Exactly 15 years ago, Netflix entered the streaming market, becoming a pioneer in a market that grows year after year. Before that, having a Netflix membership meant having DVDs at home, with the biggest competition being the (mighty at the time) Blockbuster.
Fifteen years after Netflix’s entry into this market, totally unknown at the time, the company has become an entertainment giant. Discovering the history of Netflix, which turned 15 in 2022, shows us how things have changed in recent decades.
Before getting into the world of streaming, the way Netflix impacted the world of entertainment was through logistics. If you rented DVDs (and previously VHS tapes) from Blockbuster, you typically paid your rent and feared late fees if you didn’t get back on time.
Instead, Netflix shipped DVDs to people on subscription, unafraid of late fees, the secret sauce that sealed doom, and a lot of lost profits for Blockbuster. In fact, you can still subscribe to this US Netflix service. But before DVDs became a discrete service, Netflix video streaming was a pretty limited affair.
The idea of launching the movie subscription service directly on the internet had been around for years in the company, but it was only floated when the offer of internet speeds in the US was increased and costs were reduced, which has allowed subscribers to be able to stream content over the Internet.
Initially, Netflix intended to launch a device to allow people to download content overnight to watch it the next day, as the download speed was very limited. But, with the success of platforms like YouTube, even without high-quality images, the company decided to continue with online streaming.
At launch, there were only 1,000 movies and TV series available for streaming, compared to the 70,000 DVD titles the service had at the time. And using streaming on your PC came with limitations that are unheard of in our world today.
A 2007 article of the The New York Times released exactly 15 years ago explained these limitations: “Most Netflix subscribers, who pay $18 a month and can keep three movies at home at any one time, will get 18 hours of free viewing each month. Those with cheaper plans will have fewer free hours and those with premium services will have more.
In the early days of Netflix’s streaming era, the very concept of movies or TV shows not being on physical media was something entirely new. “Netflix is launching a service to deliver movies and television shows directly to users’ PCs, not as downloads, but as streaming videos, which are not stored in computer memory,” the NYT article explained.
The post Netflix: The streaming platform turns 15 today (16) first appeared on Olhar Digital.
Source: Olhar Digital
Camila Luna is a writer at Gossipify, where she covers the latest movies and television series. With a passion for all things entertainment, Camila brings her unique perspective to her writing and offers readers an inside look at the industry. Camila is a graduate from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) with a degree in English and is also a avid movie watcher.
