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Thinking about it more, I don't think I can justify Netflix actually delaying the shipment of another DVD to limit the number of discs received in a month (and so far Netflix denies that they do this).
However, shipping popular discs is another issue. Netflix doesn't have an unlimited supply of DVDs. If, when a copy of their current #1 DVD (The Aviator) comes back in, there are 83 people that currently have it at the top of their queue, there needs to be some system for determining who is going to get it. Perhaps random selection would be most fair but I can't get to upset if they decided to go with preferring those with the fewest rentals.
Also, if your queue is full of in demand movies you run into a self throttling problem. Let's say the top 10 spots on your queue are the top 10 requested DVDs and the bottom 490 spots are all obscure Italian films that nobody but you will ever want to watch.
You send in a disc. Netflix's computers tries to give you your #1 movie, but no discs are in stock. Same with #2-#10. So you get #11. You watch it and send it back and you next get what was #12 since #1-10 are still not in stock. Six months go by and you've seen movies 11-34 and #2 because once you got lucky and it was in stock.
I wonder if Netflix might not, instead, put in a pause before shipping the next movie if it has to go too far down the list to find one in stock (that is, your #1 won't be available in the 2 hour window between a movie coming in and it trying to send out the next one) but if it waits for a day the chances of giving you #1 will be much higher though you'll have waited longer.
I once applied for a job at Netflix, but didn't get it so I don't know how their systems work. The bastards.
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