Will Netflix allow one to join just the Blu-ray portion, or do you also have to pay for streaming? I went to their site, and it was ambiguous, but gave the impression that the disc by mail program was an add-on to their streaming service.
Yes, you can just opt for the DVD/Blu Ray options. You can rent from 1 to 8 disks at a time. There is no 'just blu ray". You select both DVD and Bluray rental option or DVD only. But streaming is optional and not required.
For USA subs, the prices per month are as follows:
1. 1 DVD or BD $9.99
2. 2 DVD or BD $14.99
3. 3 DVD or BD $19.99. etc.
It's $8/mo for streaming only and if you want to add streaming to the above options, I think it's about $5 more per month. It's 2 or 3 dollars a month cheaper for DVD only (no blu rays).
edit: The prices in 1-3 are for unlimited rentals per month. My experience is that if you try to return disks more than 2 or 3 times a week, they wil throttle the rentals to slow you down (i.e. they just pretend they haven't received the disks back for up to about 6 days). But what ever plan you have, you can return that many disks about 2-3 times a week before they might kick in a throttle back once in awhile.
Netflix's profit margin is higher with just the streaming, that's why it seperated the streaming from the disk rental. Before that the base sub was 1 disk out at a time and streaming for 9/mo. They raised the prices of everything when they seperated streaming from the disk rentals, and lost a lot of subscribers and the stock price took a huge diive following that move.
But if you are sensitive to the limits that Netflix artificially puts on their "unlimited" plan, then the turn around is excellent. I can typically get new rentals 2-3 times a week with no problem.
For those that only watch a couple of movies a month, they have cheaper plans for that.