In news that might come as a surprise to those who thought said news had already occurred, Netflix announced that they’ll be shutting down their DVD.com service later this year, meaning those little red envelopes delivered to your mailbox will soon be extinct. The company will be shipping out their last round of discs on September 29th, 2023, after 25 years.
“Our goal has always been to provide the best service for our members but as the business continues to shrink that’s going to become increasingly difficult,” Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos wrote in a statement published Tuesday. “So we want to go out on a high.”
The statement goes on: “From the beginning, our members loved the choice and control that direct-to-consumer entertainment offered: the wide variety of the titles and the ability to binge watch entire series. DVDs also led to our first foray into original programming — with Red Envelope Entertainment titles including Sherrybaby and Zach Galifianakis Live at the Purple Onion.”
Related Video
Netflix DVD paved the way for modern streaming, automatically shipping out discs to subscribers based on the user’s pre-determined “queue,” and was also a leading factor in the mournful shuttering of Blockbuster Video.
“We feel so privileged to have been able to share movie nights with our DVD members for so long, so proud of what our employees achieved and excited to continue pleasing entertainment fans for many more decades to come,” the statement concludes.
Netflix shipped their first-ever DVD, Tim Burton’s Beetlejuice, on March 10th, 1998. Since then, they’ve shipped over 5.2 billion discs, with the Sandra Bullock-starring sports drama The Blind Side visiting the most mailboxes. For movie buffs who still used the service, the news comes as a disappointment, as Netflix’s library of physical discs included many hard-to-find films and TV shows that may never make it to streaming.
The death of Netflix DVD is just one of many major business changes Netflix has made recently, including escalating prices in major markets and slashing them in smaller ones. They’ve also launched an ad-supported subscription tier in an effort to compete with other streaming giants, as well as cracked down on cross-household password sharing. Not quite as glamorous as shiny discs.
