Netflix DVD-by-Mail

1998 - 2023

dead us

the red envelope outlived blockbuster, outlived the dvd format itself, and kept shipping until september 29 2023. reed hastings did not actually invent it because of a late fee on apollo 13. that origin story was a marketing tale. what actually happened is that a scotts valley garage worked out a flat-rate subscription model in 1999, and the envelope took over the rest.

» see dvd.com as it lived, on the wayback machine

~ the last words ~

netflix dvd-by-mail did not really reach turkey. i never had a us postal address to ship a red envelope to. but the service was so culturally loud during the 2000s and early 2010s that even a kid on a 33.6k modem in ankara knew the shape of the envelope. it showed up in every american sitcom of the era as a sight gag, sometimes as a plot device.

the launch was april 14 1998, out of scotts valley california. for the first year netflix was actually a per-rental store, not a subscription. the flat-rate "watch as many as you want" model came in september 1999, and that is what made the company. by 2005 they were shipping a million discs a day. by 2010 the dvd side had around 20 million subscribers, more than blockbuster ever had at peak.

streaming launched in 2007 as a free add-on for dvd subscribers. for years the two halves coexisted on one bill. then in july 2011 came the qwikster moment, the company tried to split the dvd business off into its own brand and double the price, the customer revolt was so loud that reed hastings reversed the decision in three weeks. the dvd service stayed inside netflix after that, but as a quieter and quieter sub-product.

~ the record ~

Born	April 14 1998, Scotts Valley California
Peak	20 million subscribers around 2010, 1 million discs shipped per day in 2005
Killed	September 29 2023
Lifespan	25 years
Made by	Netflix Inc, Reed Hastings and Marc Randolph
Killed by	streaming, the slow disappearance of the DVD itself

~ the long tail ~

by 2022 the dvd side still had about 1.1 million subscribers, mostly cinephiles using it for catalog access that streaming did not offer. netflix had over 230 million streaming subscribers at the same moment. the announcement came in april 2023, the final shipment date was september 29 2023, and subscribers were allowed to keep whatever discs they had. five billion shipments over twenty five years, the largest physical-media subscription business that ever existed.

~ the legacy ~

the cinephile catalog problem did not go away when the envelope did. netflix streaming has never carried the long tail that the dvd service did. the rights-holders kept the back catalog locked up in their own apps, and the easiest way to watch a 1972 movie became piracy again. the red envelope sat in american mailboxes for a quarter century and made it look easy. nothing has replaced it.

~ leave a rose ~

an anonymous tribute. one rose per visitor per day.

@}-->-- ... roses left here

@}-->--

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~ leave a wreath ~

a rose fades by morning. a wreath stays on this grave for good, with your name on it.

from $1, paid once through stripe. it keeps the graveyard running: the hosting and the nightly digging. adopt it and the headstone reads "maintained in memory by" you. the groundskeeper plants new wreaths at the next tending, usually within a day.

» one email a week: new graves and the anniversaries of the dead. subscribe

~ leave a note ~

visitors before you have left these graveside notes. anonymous welcome.

other streaming: Totalmovie, Mojvideo, iTVP, Anime on Demand

also died in the 2020s: ChicagoNow, LINE VOOM, TNN 滔新聞

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