You must have pretty fast internet then, since DVDs run somewhere between 3 and 10 mbits a second...
DVDs are based off MPEG2. Pretty much any company that's serious about streaming video
doesn't] use that because it's considered so inefficient nowadays. MPEG4 and H.264 are so much better that it wouldn't even be fair to compare them with MPEG2.
Also, Netflix did serve me the high quality video, which requires a connection speed of between 1 and 2 megabits I believe. Not at all unreasonable to assume that it could have been loaded with a roughly DVD-quality MPEG4 or H.264 stream given that high of a bandwidth requirement.
I also somewhat doubt that they use 24-bit 96KHz audio. That would make a pretty big difference. It also doesn't have 5.1 surround support.