netflix inc is ending its DVD-by-mail business, the company said in a blog post Tuesday, ending a service that began about 25 years ago.
The company claims that its DVD rental business has been shrinking and that it will no longer be able to offer a quality service. Netflix will ship the last discs on September 29.
“Those iconic red envelopes changed the way people watched shows and movies at home – and paved the way for the shift to streaming,” said Netflix Co-CEO, ted sarandosin a blog announcing that the DVD service had entered its “final season”.
Marc Randolph, the co-founder of Netflix, described in his autobiography how he and his co-founder Reed Hastings had flirted with the idea of challenging Blockbuster Video with mail order VHS cassettes, but it would have cost them too much. Instead, they settled on a more cost-effective proposition: DVDs sold and rented online.
It was a calculated risk that the budding breeder of DVD, which first went on sale in the United States in 1997, will resonate with the consumer. The service launched in 1998 with fewer than 1,000 titles, by Randolph’s account.
“Going for DVDs was a risk,” Randolph wrote in his book “That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea.” He added: “But it could also be our way of finally opening up that category.” .
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