“It turns out that’s a very high speed network,” Hastings told an audience during a question and answer session.
Instead of tapes, Hastings thought about how much data a DVD could hold.
“When a friend told me about DVDs and I realized, well that’s 5 gigabytes of data and you know you can mail that very inexpensively, I realized that is a digital distribution network. And from that original exercise, it made me think we can build Netflix first on DVD and then eventually the internet would catch up with the postal system and pass it,” Hastings said.
Netflix began as a company that sent DVDs of films and TV shows to people. The company, founded in 1997, introduced streaming in 2007. By 2010, the volume of streaming users exceeded the number of DVD mail subscribers.
Hastings said the company has nearly 100 million streaming subscribers and a little under 5 million DVD mail users.
