I remember several years ago, when Netflix first started to grow in popularity, someone reverse-engineered how they handled the queue system. He published it in an expose' on the web and it caused a bit of a stir, because it basically penalized the best customers for being so good.

My household has always gotten whatever is at the top of the queue, but that's because we only ever seem to order discs that no one else cares about. For the rest of the world, first-run movies are common queue toppers, and when demand exceeds supply, they have to have rules that govern who gets the scarce discs next. It's this complex set of rules that the dude figured out just by having a couple of Netflix accounts and doing a bunch of observations.

I'll go look for the article.