I was wondering recently whether someone could conceivably start a disk-in-the-mail Netflix again, now that streaming sucks so much and every publisher seems to want their own streaming service. My understanding (possibly wrong, I'm not an expert) is that it's perfectly legal to lend out physical media without any special permission from the publisher under the first-sale doctrine, so it seems like the only way to build a library that has content from many different publishers.

(of course, this could only work as long as publishers keep producing physical media)

Scarecrow Video does this in Seattle. Their library is amazing.

https://scarecrowvideo.org/rent-by-mail

Library. I order DVDs to my local library all the time. Maybe your library system is terrible, but if it isn't you certainly can do this. There are hundreds a big wide release films with, effectively, are only available on DVD from a library (legally).

Bonus when I go I can still get that browsing the aisle experience like in an old video store (but in this case I am lucky, my local library has a large DVD / Blu-ray collection to browse)

Before someone comes in and says something moronic (because physical media isn't a VC funded B2B SaaS business), I'd like to remind everyone that Redbox was going strong until Chicken Soup for the Soul bought them. Even in the late 2010s when streaming was really taking off, you could often go down to your local corner store and rent a DVD or BluRay out of a Redbox machine.

The only reason people went to streaming in the first place was that Netflix was cheap and, arguably, a heavily subsidized monopoly in the streaming space.

So yeah, some kind of DVD/BluRay business could very well work in the US and Canada.

The pirates version of blockbuster is still alive and well at your local library.