According to this article in Wired Magazine, the discs are specially manufactured by the studios for Netflix. Obviously they don't need the packaging as well. It is the same deal for Columbia House where CDs are specially manufactured separate from the retail version.

Around the same time, Bob Pisano, a former MGM executive and current CEO of the Screen Actors Guild, joined the Netflix board and set up meetings for Hastings with studio moguls like Warren Lieberfarb, president of Warner Home Video. During the next year, most of the studios signed revenue-sharing agreements that called for Netflix to buy DVDs at cost and kick back a percentage of a customer's subscription fee for every movie rented. (Blockbuster pioneered revenue sharing in the VHS era but has no such arrangement with DVDs.)

Yep, Netflix gets spindles with DVDs on them for many of the movies from studios they have DVDs with.

They also sometimes do get exclusive access to a film for a brief window.

Croupier was one example a couple of years ago and they have a deal with another film coming out soon I forget the name of.

This is good info, thanks to both of you. I thought I had been keeping pretty good track of Netflix, but somehow I missed this. I'm still a little surprised that they actually printed the Netflix logo right on the disc, but I don't know why that surprises me, given the business relationship.