Released at the discretion of Netflix?

Yesterday I received the movie Higher Ground in the mail from Netflix.

The funny thing is, that was the first day of its official availability.

Which means the movie actually got shipped out on January 9th, a day before it was officially available.

Now, I know that Netflix doesn't rip open a box of new movies every Tuesday. I'm sure they've had them in stock for plenty of time, and Tuesday is the day they are allowed to unleash them on the world -- Tuesday being the traditional release date for new DVDs and BluRays.

But I found it kind of funny that they were allowed to/inclined to jump the official release date by one day on shipping, meaning I'd theoretically be able to enjoy it on the actual first day of its release. I guess that makes a certain sense -- if I had been picking it up from Blockbuster or another movie rental business with physical locations, I'd have been able to see it yesterday. But it still struck me as getting some kind of extra benefit from Netflix, which was nice to see.

That's all.