Netflix Streaming Far Cheaper than Mailed DVDs

I recently ran across a very old story, that it costs Netflix about one-tenth as much to stream a movie as to mail one, but it got me thinking. If that's so, it isn't automatically to Netflix's benefit to stream rather than mail, though it seems like it would be. After all, you can watch far more movies streaming than you can via DVD, at least on most plans. If one has the minimal plans, one or two discs, one could easily watch ten times or more streaming than one could get with those one or two discs.

My guess is that most people have more than the minimum, so it is a net profit if people with four or five discs spend more time streaming.