Mr. [Reed] Hastings, a veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur, says he anticipated the demise of DVDs almost from the time he co-founded the company in 1997. The company’s name, coined by Netflix co-founder Marc Randolph, didn’t reference discs or mailboxes. From almost the beginning, Netflix invested in software formulas to crunch data about its customers’ tastes so it could recommend DVDs to them, a technology Mr. Hastings believed would carry over to an Internet movie service.

In January 2007, Netflix began letting subscribers stream video to their PCs from the company’s Web site, allowing users to watch video almost instantly without keeping permanent copies on their hard drives. The service featured only about 1,000 movies and television shows — about 1% of its DVD selection — but subscribers could use it for no extra charge.

Now more than 20% of Netflix members regularly use the service. The company says new users attracted by streamed movies have helped push its subscriber total up 25% to 10.3 million at the end of March from a year earlier.

A lot of big properties went Kaput in Downtown Providence