Netflix To End DVDs By Mail In September

Netflix announced Tuesday it plans to end its DVD by mail service. The final shipment of DVDs will be September 29. DVDs by mail was the original business model when Netflix launched on April 14, 1998. Before that, one had to venture out to a video store to rent a VHS or DVD. Under the Netflix subscription, members could keep a designated number of discs at a time, from one under the least expensive plans to three or more. Subscribers kept a queue online of movies they wanted. Netflix would mail DVDs in a red envelope. When finished, members could ship the movie back to Netflix in the same envelope, with postage included in the membership. Once Netflix received the return, it would ship the next movie in the member’s queue.

… Netflix began streaming in 2007.

… The original name for Netflix was “Kibble,” but it was changed to “Netflix” as a combination of “Internet” and “Flicks” (slang for movies).

… The first Netflix DVD envelope was white, not red.

… The first DVD rented on Netflix was the 1998 film Beetlejuice.

… At the height of its DVD service, Netflix had a library of over 100,000 movie and TV show titles, making it one of the largest selections available for home entertainment.

… To ensure fast delivery, Netflix operated over 50 distribution centers across the United States. At its peak, the company was mailing out approximately 2 million DVDs per day.

… Here’s an old TV ad for Blockbuster’s DVD-by-mail service, which compared itself to Netflix.