• Flexplay: The Disposable DVD that Failed (Thankfully) [Technology Connections]
    8 replies, posted
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccneE_gkSAs
Gottverdammt, can you imagine the mountains of electronics waste that would have piled up if these things caught on?
I actually know its predecessor. I forget what it's called but there was this limited play VHS that would erase itself after its maximum amount of plays had been reached. And if you think those DVDs would have caused a colossal mountain of waste, imagine that but with VHS tapes instead.
Makes me wonder how much waste those AOL CDs generated, actually...
At one point in time, 50% of all CDs ever produced were AOL free trial discs. Even now, they still make up a sizable chunk of all CDs ever manufactured.
I don't know whether that's impressive or sad.
None, because everyone is still using them as coffee coasters.
Honestly just talking about what Netflix used to be is interesting, back in the day I seriously thought they were gonna lose out to Blockbuster because when they first started they were just a mail-order DVD rental service. My family seriously subscribed to Blockbuster's service over pre-streaming Netflix.
Netflix probably would have lost had they not hit upon the idea of putting movies up for streaming. Although more than movies, I think when they started putting full TV shows up is what really saved them, because it was a huge on-demand library of a bunch of stuff you'd have to either wait to come on TV (or something actually worthwhile to populate the cable companies' pathetic on-demand services) or buy expensive box sets to watch through. It's why Hulu appeared so soon afterwards, because all the media companies were caught with their pants down: "Oh frig, Netflix struck gold on this, we ought to see if we can get a bigger piece of the pie than just streaming royalties". When we got to Orange is the New Black kicking off the line of Netflix Originals, that was just icing on the cake at that point. Although Netflix seems to be a shadow of its former self now, with all the other media companies pulling their content off of it to put on their own streaming services instead. Now it's increasingly relying on Netflix Originals to keep itself alive, and from what I've heard, the quality of its original output has suffered lately as its content teams continue trying to pump out as much as possible in a desperate bid to stay relevant. I think Netflix is past its peak and on a steady decline, although it was pretty awesome while it was up there. The entire Star Trek franchise, tons of MythBusters episodes, rotating Good Eats episodes, a couple of anime shows, MCU stuff, Voltron LD, and so on all meant that my Wii (and later Wii U and 3DS) got plenty of additional use simply to binge stuff on my couch. Good times.
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