For one of the world’s most popular streaming services Netflix January is the birthday month, because it started providing its services in the beginning of 2007. But at that time they were quite different from what we can use now.
Netflix entered the market with the ability to receive movies recorded on DVD discs (or more recently VHS tapes) to your home. But compared to their competitors, they did this based on a subscription fee rather than a specific rental period. Compared to its biggest competitor at the time, Blockbuster, it was a different kind of delivery in terms of customer convenience, as the old option had many paying for the days of missed returns.
However, the monthly subscription fee did not have such penalties, which made it much more popular and interesting for the end consumer. When Netflix first took its first steps into streaming digital content, it wasn’t like it is today either. Namely, along with deliveries of physical copies, the possibility to watch digital content for a certain number of hours per month began to appear. For example, standard Netflix subscription plan users got 18 hours of viewing time.
Of course, the range of films also reached one thousand at the very beginning, but now it is measured in about 70 thousand. It should be noted that even ten years ago, smart TVs were not as developed and popular as they are now, when Netflix is already integrated into them. Over time, the streaming service has completely changed the industry and the way we consume different movies and TV series, where everything is available instantly and everything is based on subscription.