Today I learned Netflix still had a disc business to quit.
Now is the time for Blockbuster to STRIKE!
I’m still a subscriber. Disc catalog is larger than any single streaming library.
Yup. Also literally the only way to get certain movies and shows, which aren’t on any streaming service.
Yup. I’ll be sad when the disc-based service we use in the UK eventually goes kaput for this reason. What a shame about Netflix.
I hung on to it for a very long time. Which is to say, until about 10 years ago.
I … honest to god though this would be like a 10 year old thread that got bumped.
When I was single and before the time of prestige tv, I was on their 4 discs at a time plan. I had a backlog of hundreds of movies and would watch one every night. You used to be able to go on the site and tell them you put it in the mail so they would mail the next one to you right away.
I think I was a subscriber for almost 20 years straight. It was only when streaming got decent 4k and sound and Netflix decided not to rent 4k discs that I quit.
Oh, there are other ways. Hehe…
Like, your local library! You would be shocked at how many movies they have for you to rent.
What did you think I was suggesting?
But, in all seriousness, that is disappointing. I wonder what will happen with their library? We gonna have a disc only fire sale?
Same here. Most of my movie nights aren’t a last-minute impulse buy, so I always have three movies queued up to watch, and they look better than streaming. Really sad to see this go.
I bet they could rake it in if they had a big-ass yard sale of all those DVDs.
Wait, I actually have a couple of their DVDs currently. If they’re going to feed their entire inventory into a shredder, should I just… keep them?
This news sucks. DVDs could be a nice play with the current zeitgeist that mixes 00s retro appeal with anti-streaming-service sentiment. Netflix would not be able to go after themselves like that, though.
I wonder if they tried to spin it off. It might be hard to find a buyer when revenue is declining tens of millions of dollars each year.
Not spin it off, exactly, but a dozen years ago they tried to break Netflix Instant Watch and the DVD service apart into Netflix (with streaming!) and Qwickster.
There was an outcry, especially over the dumb name, and they backed down, barely a hundred outraged messages into this thread:
Now, in this decade, there must not be enough disc-users to care.
I wonder what kind of financial hit the post office will feel from this?
I’m in the TIL they still had a disc business. Would there be any significant hit? How many people still have DVDs?
I delivered mail up until about 2 years ago At that time, out of about 5,000 homes I delivered to (I frequently worked on multiple routes during a week) there was 1 home that got Netflix DVDs and they got 3 just about every week. Pretty anecdotal, I know, but this was a rural community and so I would imagine the prime customers for Netflix DVDs (poor internet access out there). The uniqueness of them really burned into my mind. It was like delivering a Western Union telegram or something.
Counterpoint, the prime customers for Netflix DVDs are coastal elitist cineastes.