In the beginning, there was video rental. You could pay a visit to your favorite location, either a standalone establishment or a corner of your grocery store, pay a few dollars, and return home to enjoy a movie on your VHS or Betamax (remember those?) VCR.
Then came dvds. Movie renting became more popular, standalone rental stores could be found every few miles, and since they couldn’t offer a large enough selection, the local supermarkets pretty much got out of the movie rental business.
The home movie-watching market took a leap forward when the cable industry began to offer “Video on Demand.” Now you could choose a movie, view it at your leisure, have it charged to your monthly cable bill, and never need to leave your house. In exchange for this convenience, you were offered a much more limited selection than you would have if you got in your car and drove to your local video store.
The problem of limited selection was quickly solved, however, with the advent of mail-order movie rental. A subscription to a mail-order movie rental service would allow you to choose from literally tens of thousands of movie titles, set them up in your rental queue, and have them mailed directly to your door.