Streaming: Why Netflix no longer ships DVDs

2023-04-19 14:49:01

Opinion Streaming

Why Netflix no longer ships DVDs

Status: 2:49 p.m | Reading time: 2 minutes

Look, the new movies are here!

What: REUTERS

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Netflix stops sending DVDs of movies in the mail after a quarter of a century. After the death of the video store, the streaming giant is now sealing the short era of silver discs. This is a turning point, but mourning is not appropriate.

Netflix no longer sends DVDs by post, after 25 years the service in the USA will be discontinued. It can be assumed that many readers in Germany do not know that today’s streaming giant started out like this in 1998 with Tim Burton’s “Beetlejuice”, so it doesn’t really matter anyway. But the end of mailing is only a small step for Netflix because not much was left in terms of sales. From a symbolic point of view, however, the announcement is a turning point.

It was said at the time that the author of these lines saw the pieces of silver, which were sent in thin paper sleeves, for the first time in 2005 at his landlady in Philadelphia. That’s a nice idea – my thought must have been that simple. That sucks for the video stores, though, because what will happen to Blockbuster, the DVD rental company that used to be omnipresent? Will he fall victim to the lazy Americans who don’t feel like walking the few steps to the video store? Just five years later, Blockbuster filed for bankruptcy, and the last stores were closed in 2013.

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Well, my imagination was limited despite extensive use of the internet. After all, in the summer of 2005, YouTube was only six months old, and two years later, in 2007, Netflix streamed the first series. The two film critics of the Philadelphia Inquirer, for which I was working at the time, sent me to screenings of films such as Werner Herzog’s Grizzly Man – whether they also had white envelopes from Netflix in the mail at the time, I don’t know.

Today, Netflix, as a listed company, is under pressure because investor expectations are huge despite a recent increase in profits. Investors won’t care much about the end of mailing, but the message is important. Here and now, the physical existence of discs is over and Netflix just streams. In the past quarter century, 5.2 billion DVDs have been shipped. No reason to be wistful now, the discs lacked patina and pathos.

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In order to display embedded content, your revocable consent to the transmission and processing of personal data is required, since the providers of the embedded content as third-party providers require this consent [In diesem Zusammenhang können auch Nutzungsprofile (u.a. auf Basis von Cookie-IDs) gebildet und angereichert werden, auch außerhalb des EWR]. By setting the switch to “on”, you agree to this (which can be revoked at any time). This also includes your consent to the transfer of certain personal data to third countries, including the USA, in accordance with Art. 49 (1) (a) GDPR. You can find more information about this. You can withdraw your consent at any time via the switch and via privacy at the bottom of the page.