Like me, Neil saw the national increase in internet bandwidth as a possibility: a way to use digital means to deliver Netflix movies directly to TV sets and further shrink the time between finishing one movie and getting the next one. Instantaneous streaming wasn’t possible in 2002, and downloads would take hours—but we were betting that even so, passively downloading a movie while you were asleep or at work was still preferable to getting in the car and driving to Blockbuster. In our ideal, spitballing world, customers would always have a few downloaded movies ready to watch in a device on
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