Evolution of the Netflix Envelope

An anonymous reader wrote to mention an article over on CNN Money. They go into some detail on what seven years of tinkering has done for the simple red Netflix envelope. From the article: "Years of experimentation went into creating the perfect DVD envelope. In 1999, Netflix started out with a heavy cardboard mailer. With only 100,000 subscribers, costs weren't a concern yet. Then the company experimented with plastic envelopes, which proved not to be recyclable, and padding, which added too much to postage costs. Both top-loading and side-loading envelopes made an appearance."

Comments

Lies from the article

[Talinth]

From the article. The result of more than five years of experimentation, this mailer transports approximately 1.4 million DVDs a day to Netflix's 4.2 million subscribers. This isn't even theoretically possible. This would require them to ship 3 DVDs per person per day. You can tell how they came up with the number. But assuming the post office would deliver the same day it was shipped, and that you watched it and returned it that day, this would require every netflix subscriber to Watch 3 movies a day. I'm skeptical.