Gizmodo published a nice write-up about Netflix's OpenConnect, available at: http://gizmodo.com/this-box-can-hold-an-entire-netflix-1592590450
It's not just Netflix investing in their own content delivery. Apple, Microsoft, Amazon and most major publishers are investing in their own CDN around the content and services they deploy. Some operators like the boxes, because they decrease network CapEx. Others dislike them, because they're still pushing their own services. Others (notably, in Germany) are prohibited from putting private equipment in the network because it opens a Pandora's box of who else you need to support (including network neutrality issues).
Looking at the big picture, it takes a whole lot of end-to-end pieces to make video flow seamlessly. We're working with lots of great companies innovating around video delivery. It's a fabulous area.
Ultimately, real delivery systems (including that of Netflix) aren't a single box. There is a mix of ingestion workflows, video content management systems, origin servers, segmentation and packaging, control / management and analytics layers, client-side players, content protection and more.
