Netflix’s DVD business is officially dead after 25 years
The streaming giant shipped out its final red envelope this morning
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A moment of silence for all those years of patiently waiting for a red envelope containing The Big Lebowski or The Notebook or The Departed or any of the other near 70,000 titles in Netflix’s unmatched DVD collection to magically show up in your mailbox. The streaming giant and Blockbuster assassin shipped out its final disc ever this morning, putting a conclusive fade-to-black on one of the last remaining great legacies in physical media.
Netflix’s DVD-by-mail service started 25 years ago, with a copy of Beetlejuice (the first disc ever shipped), a dial-up modem, and a dream. The streamer commemorated their humble origins in a blog post and video tribute today, set to a lo-fi rendition of Blink 182's “All The Small Things.” (Say it ain’t so!)
“Thank you for loving our red envelopes, sharing countless movie nights with us at home and being part of our final season,” the post concludes, following a long info-graphic timeline depicting some of the DVD service’s greatest hits. (Shrek was, appropriately, the only non-red envelope ever shipped. The most DVDs sent in one day? A whopping 4.9 million in 2011.) No word on what the lucky, final title out the door was.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Netflix’s DVD arm (later housed on DVD.com) still accounted for about a third of the company’s total revenue as late as 2012. That number has steadily declined in the years since.
Still, the mega-streamer has been incredibly darling about this whole shut-down process, as if they weren’t the ones to sign the DVD era’s death warrant themselves by pivoting to streaming in 2007. A billboard put up by the company spelling out the words “DVDs will always be in our DNA” with real, now unusable discs serves as a tidy little metaphor for this changing of the guard. No word from the company yet on what will happen to the rest of the massive collection, but hopefully this veritable Library of Alexandria will suffer a slightly better fate.
26 Comments
What’s a DVD?
I haven’t used the DVD by mail service in years, so I’m certainly part of the reason why they decided to end it, but this does kinda suck because they had a shit-ton more physical media than they have available to stream.
Reed Hastings founded Netflix August 1997 which was just a few months after DVD players were available for purchase in the US. You can’t say he wasn’t a visionary.
i think the craziest thing is how good a name netflix is for an online streaming service, and how bad a name it is for a mail-order dvd rental service.
Remember when Netflix was going to change the name of their DVD service to Qwikster?
i had forgotten. wretched name.
They ended up going with DVD.com — I was a member to the end. In fact, I stupidly dropped the two discs I’d gotten from them in the mail on Thursday hoping I’d catch one more pair before they shut down….I got the notice yesterday that they’d shut down, and to go ahead and hang onto my last two discs. 😢
I resubscribed to the DVD services this past May when I heard it was ending. I had last subscribed 6 years previously. While their movie library did now resemble a run down video store on its last legs, it still had enough 2000s era dodgy horror movies that nobody will probably ever bother re-releasing streaming or even by some boutique physical media label to keep satisfied for the last few months. In the early 2000s, Netflix carried everything from the Spirit Halloween décor’ of Super Hell to Malpertuis. Unlike Blockbuster, Netflix was at one point awesome.
Man…getting a dvd with two battlestar episodes on it, then watching them real quick so I could drop them in the corner box with late pickup so I could get another dvd with two episodes in two days rather than three…why did this model decline again?Honestly, I’ll miss it, but the inconvenience wasn’t quite worth it. These days if I want something that isn’t streaming I hit up my local rental shop. I think the lack of due date with Netflix disc was actually a problem: it let you hang onto movies for months on end because you just weren’t in the mood tonight. The weirdest movie I had this experience with was the og 70s Pete’s Dragon, for some reason. My roommates razzed me so hard for that, I couldn’t return it without watching it. I think it sat for six months, then i gave it 25 minutes before I bailed.
“Honestly, I’ll miss it, but the inconvenience wasn’t quite worth it.”
Oh, fuck off.
Oooh, look at you mr. fancy pants, with your “local rental shop”. Just gonna hop in your flying robot taxi to get over there I bet.
My biggest concern is the cache of movies and shows that have never been streamed and may never be streamed. Whether it’s rights issues or just never having been processed, there must be countless works — including masterpieces or just very very good/entertaining stuff — that may have only been available to a wide audience through Netflix’s DVD service.
There was, that’s why I hung onto my DVD membership. I wouldn’t have developed the weird affection I had for Jess Franco movies if not to their disc service…and Tim Lucas’s articles about Franco in the also-defunct VIDEO WATCHDOG.
I spent last night adding a bunch of movies I would kind of like to own to my queue in the hopes that they’ll be among the up to ten that Netflix will be sending for me to keep. Fingers crossed.
It wasn’t really clear if you’d definitely get one and at least up to ten, or if getting anything extra at all was a crapshoot. I guess I’ll find out over the next few days. I moved some stuff up to the top, just in case– even though it also wasn’t really clear if the up-to-ten was from your first ten spots in the queue, or a random sample of the entire thing.
I think it’s more or less random. Like, if there’s a specific movie that only you, out of all their users, put on your queue, you’ll probably get it, but if there’s a movie that’s on nearly everyone’s queue, then only a few lucky people will receive it. I’d also imagine it has to do with things like whether a movie is currently located at the distribution center nearest to you, etc. But of course all of this is just educated guessing.
I have slowly been doing the same to my queue the past couple weeks. I made sure it was full of a good dozen plus movies I wanted to own. Looks like I get two to keep. So it is. I made sure they were in order of priority, so the ones I wanted most are the ones I am getting, but it would have been nice to have at least a couple more from the list after all these years.
I got the last two they sent me, but they were just the first movies in my queue. There’s no indication if I’ll be getting more, but I guess they have no reason to bother even letting me know if I will. I guess I’ll keep vaguely hoping for something to come for a couple more weeks.
I have been on the one disc plan. I got that disc earlier this week. Friday morning, I got an email that one more disc was sent (from the top of my queue), so I know that has to be my bonus. Since I wasn’t notified of any more discs, I assume it’s just the one extra.
How did everyone game out your final DVD to keep? (I do not think that I am getting any bonuses.) I chose Day for Night. I tried to get Children of Paradise, but it was on long wait, so if that was you, enjoy. I thought about Bergman, but his stuff is relatively easy to find; even Max has a reasonable selection, and they even have several Ozu films. Next up, Criterion.com.First rental, Brick, followed by Rushmore.
I got two discs (the final one in my plan plus one extra). I was hoping for more, but I also made sure to put my queue in priority order so that if I only did get one or two, they’d be the ones I wanted most.
They are horrible traitors who have destroyed the last useful thing their company produced. I shall be cancelling my account forthwith…. just as soon as I finish the new season of Bake Off. And watch the new Scott Pilgrim cartoon.God damn it, Netflix!
The Verge recently did a really excellent piece on the logistics and puzzle-solving that went into making Netflix’s DVD service. Highly worth a read for anyone that ever rented DVDs by mail for a significant amount of time.https://www.theverge.com/23883662/netflix-dvd-shutdown-complex-tech-packaging-mail
This really dates that Scott Pilgrim scene that was released a few days ago
Death Proof arrived last week, and they say they’re sending The Last Seduction; kinda hoped for more, but hey… I do love Wendy Kroy.