Netflix officially said goodbye to its DVD rental service.
The multibillion-dollar streaming service announced it has shipped its final DVD on Friday, Sept. 29, marking the tip of the corporate’s 25-year run as a DVD lending company.
In April, Netflix notified the general public and its customer base that it might ship its final discs before the tip of 2023.
Netflix began as a DVD rental company in 1998 and shipped movies and series to homes, which enticed customers who now not wished to travel to video rental stores in person.
“For 25 years, we redefined how people watched movies and series at home, and shared the thrill as they opened their mailboxes to our iconic red envelopes,” Netflix wrote on Friday.
“It’s the tip of an era, however the DVD business built our foundation for the years to come back – giving members unprecedented selection and control, a wide range of titles to pick from and the liberty to observe as much as they need,” the corporate continued.
Customers who relied on Netflix’s rental service – DVD.com – will now not have the opportunity to put orders on the platform.
In light of Netflix’s final DVD shipment, the corporate published an inventory of facts and statistics on its rental service.
Netflix began as a DVD rental company in 1998 and shipped tens of millions of films and TV shows to homes internationally over time.Getty Images
The primary DVD it shipped was “Beetlejuice,” which was mailed on March 10, 1998, based on the streaming giant.
Netflix claims it shipped red envelopes to 239,000 mailboxes throughout its run.
The corporate reportedly reached a million DVD rental subscribers in 2003 and grew its subscriber base to twenty million by 2011.
Netflix Chief Executive Officer Reed Hastings sits in a cart stuffed with ready-to-be-shipped DVDs on Jan. 29, 2002 in San Jose, CA. Getty Images
Netflix also claims the corporate shipped its five billionth DVD in 2019.
Throughout its two-plus-decade run, Netflix’s DVD rental service has offered its customer base “20 essential genres” and “530 subgenres” to pick from.
The news of Netflix’s shuttered DVD rental service comes nine years, eight months and 17 days after Blockbuster – a former video rental competitor of Netflix – closed its corporate-owned stores.
Netflix began its streaming business division in 2007.
As a preferred streaming service, Netflix has roughly 238.4 million paid subscribers worldwide, based on the corporate’s second-quarter earnings report for 2023.
