Netflix, an online site which streams television and movies, has gained in popularity over the past four years. Netflix’s goal is to “disrupt the cable industry by destroying the concept of waiting,” which they have successfully done by having thousands of movies and television shows immediately available for watching upon sign-in. Netflix has 100,00 available DVDs (Digital Versatile Disks) ready to ship by postal mail.

What makes Netflix unique is that there are no late fees. Customers are able to keep DVDs as long as they want at home and never have to pay a late fee. The only catch is that customers are only allowed to have one DVD at a time, unless the customer is paying a higher monthly rate to have more than one DVD delivered. Users do not receive the next DVD until the previous one is sent back.

More than 25 million Netflix accounts consume more than one billion hours of Netflix content a month. Over the past four years, revenue has increased by $590 million because of the appeal of the no-late fees, no additional shipping or handling fees and a flat rate for an unlimited number of films.

“My family has a Netflix account, and we love it. We’re allowed to stream Netflix on three different devices, so we can all watch it at the same time too. It’s actually pretty distracting,” said junior Megan Wells.

Netflix has slowly been trying to take over television. The first step to doing so was to create “Netflix Originals,” including the new show “House of Cards,” a show only available to Netflix subscribers on the site. The appeal is that users don’t have to wait for weekly episodes. Since all episodes are available at once, users are able to watch as much or as little as they want, rewatch it as much as they want whenever they want.

Reed Hastings, Netflix CEO, hopes that “in a few years the thought of paying for cable will sound absurd.”

Although Netflix doesn’t stream newer releases due to the fact that they want to stick to the $7.99 flat rate a month, its appeal is huge.

“We haven’t canceled our cable or anything because there are shows that Netflix doesn’t have, but I’m pretty sure our family would be completely fine if we just relied on Netflix instead of television,” said eighth grader Ellena Igari.

Netflix could soon mean the end of cable companies as well as DVD rental companies, such as Blockbuster, a company that filed for bankruptcy in 2010, just about the time that Netflix became popular.

“I hardly have any reason to even watch television any more. There’s such a vast selection of things you can watch on Netflix. You’re never bored. On television there’s usually one or two good movies that you have to watch with commercials. On Netflix there’s always good movies available that you can watch with no commercials. That’s what really won me over: no commercials,” said junior Anjelica Barker.