Netflix makes huge change to its service - but you probably won't even notice it
It's an end of an era as Netflix announced it will discontinue its DVD service in light of it's long-eroded popularity.
The DVD service that has been steadily shrinking in the shadow of Netflix's video streaming service will shut down after its five remaining distribution centers in California, Texas, Georgia and New Jersey mail out their final discs Friday.
The fewer than 1 million recipients who still subscribe to the DVD service will be able to keep the final discs that land in their mailboxes. "It's sad," longtime Netflix DVD subscriber Amanda Konkle said Thursday as she waited the arrival for her final disc, "The Nightcomers," a 1971 British horror film featuring Marlon Brando. "It's makes me feel nostalgic. Getting these DVDs has been part of my routine for decades."
Some customers prefer Netflix DVDs because they offer a wider selection of movies (AP)Some of the remaining DVD diehards will get up to 10 discs as a going-away present to loyal customers such as Amanda, 41, who has watched more than 900 titles since signing up for the service in 2006. In hopes of being picked for the 10 DVD giveaway, Amanda set up her queue to highlight more movies starring Marlon Brando and older films that are difficult to find on streaming.
At its peak, the DVD boasted more than 20 million subscribers who could choose from more than 100,000 titles stocked in the Netflix library. But in 2011, Netflix made the pivotal decision to separate the DVD side business from a streaming business that now boasts 238 million worldwide subscribers and generated $31.5 billion in revenue per year.
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After boxing out Blockbuster, Netflix DVDs reshaped at-home entertainment (Getty Images)"It is very bittersweet," said Marc Randolph, Netflix's CEO when the company shipped its first DVD, "Beetlejuice," in April 1998. "We knew this day was coming, but the miraculous thing is that it didn't come 15 years ago."
Although he hasn't been involved in Netflix's day-to-day operations for 20 years, Marc came up with the idea for a DVD-by-service in 1997 with his friend and fellow entrepreneur, Reed Hastings, who eventually succeeded him as CEO - a job Hastings held until stepping aside earlier this year.
In 1997, DVDs were so hard to find that when they decided to test whether a disc could make it through the U.S. Postal Service Marc wound up slipping a CD containing Patsy Cline's greatest hits into a pink envelope and dropping it in the mail to Hastings from the Santa Cruz, California, post office.
Along the way, the red-and-white envelopes that delivered the DVDs to subscribers' homes became an eagerly anticipated piece of mail that turned enjoying a "Netflix night" into a cultural phenomenon.
The DVD service also spelt the end of Blockbuster, which went bankrupt in 2010 after its management turned down an opportunity to buy Netflix instead of trying to compete against it.
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