Dear readers, I currently find myself a man of great vengeance and furious anger. Netflix’s decision to cancel its DVD service feels like a great wrong is being perpetrated against the world of movie lovers. As someone who still uses this service for several reasons, the impending September 29th sunsetting of this DVD rental service has me fuming about how difficult renting physical movies is about to become for those who don’t live close to an area that still has an active rental boutique. Let me lay out the case of why this makes me mad, and why you should be just as angry as I am.
A Unique Revenue Stream Has Been Removed From Netflix’s Business Model
Let’s start where most businesses like to start these sorts of discussions: the wallet. While I’m not privy to any sort of costs that are required to maintain Netflix’s DVD service, I do know that another revenue stream is being removed from the company. Yes, there are some of us subscribers that still have very good reasons to rent Netflix’s DVDs and are willing to part with extra money on top of our streaming subscriptions.
Surely the number of people that believe in such a practice can’t be that few and far in-between to make this practice unprofitable. This is a concern that deserves some more consideration when the streaming side of Netflix isn’t as interested in making money with theatrical releases of films like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery.
Even if the company is shifting its focus towards its own projects, both streaming and in theaters, having a physical media service to rent these things out on isn’t a horrible idea. Not to mention, renting DVDs did offer Netflix another advantage in the war for people’s eyeballs.
Having A DVD Rental Service Is More Incentive To Be A Netflix Subscriber
Let’s face it: the streaming ecosystem isn’t what it used to be. With a lot of players now taking their own slice of the pie, you need to be careful with who you’re subscribing with. Paramount is going to want to have its movies on Paramount+, and all other studios in that bracket are going to usually want the same sort of exclusivity. With its DVD services, Netflix has always had a trump card in this battle of hearts and minds.
While Netflix has its own slew of original series and movies on its digital streaming platform, its repertory catalog isn’t as lush as it used to be. Remember the old days when Disney and Marvel seemed to exclusively stream on Netflix? While those days are gone, you could still rent Black Panther: Wakanda Forever through the DVD service and keep up with the times.
For Netflix to still offer that type of convenience only seemed like good business, as it was a compromise between the streaming frontier and the more traditional home video experience. Removing that feature devalues the company’s entertainment experience, as it’s closer to being seen as just another streamer.
Netflix’s DVD Library Is An Invaluable Research Tool
In the days of physical media, it was almost assured that even if your movie bombed, there’d be a record of its existence. Actually having a copy of a film like the mostly forgotten Robin Williams oddity Toys meant you could watch it any time you wanted, even when a movie like that would eventually find itself caught in limbo between format shifts. While that particular movie just found itself arriving on Starz’s streaming library, there weren't many legal options for a person to experience that movie in the interim.
People wanting to seek out movies like this could always try their hand at Netflix’s DVD library having those sorts of titles on hand. That alone proves that this option is an invaluable research tool, as it’s almost like another form of your public library; which can also have quite the limiting physical media collection. Not to mention, trying to buy a copy of Toys on DVD is a limited proposition that could run you a bit of money.
With video stores hanging by a thread, save for a bunch of independent operations and one last Blockbuster on Earth since 2018, the DVD side of Netflix reached the spots that streaming doesn’t always hit. I still have a copy of The Ipcress File that I rented from the service, as I want to dig into that Michael Caine spy series that hasn’t always been accessible through streaming. I’ll have to return that sooner than later, as there are still a ton of movies I’ve been meaning to experience in this analog paradise of obscure titles, and the clock is ticking.
Killing Netflix’s DVD Service Is Another Defeat In The Fight To Preserve Physical Media
The greatest crime in Netflix’s cancellation of its DVD service is that it’s a potentially huge blow to the practice of preserving physical media. With the rental stores it once competed with pretty much dead and gone, it’s up to the digital frontier to offer refuge for those who want to see their favorite movies that they might not own.
And even if someone owns a movie they cherish digitally, there have been concerns over whether parties like Apple can delete titles from your personal library. Plus, Netflix should be fighting this battle too for their own sake, because its own movie canon faces eventual extinction if it doesn’t. What good is producing Knives Out 3, which is currently being written by Rian Johnson as we speak, if fans can’t eventually purchase a copy to go along with their physical release of Daniel Craig’s original Benoit Blanc mystery?
Nothing beats having a movie existing in a physical copy that can be bought or lent out for enjoyment. When servers crash, companies go bankrupt or streaming rights lapse and remove a title you love from any digital library of the moment, that tangible access is always going to be there. That is, until you have to buy another copy, of course, but that's another rant for another day.
Not knowing if this month’s new Netflix releases include Batman Begins is always subject to change, but there was security in knowing that if it wasn’t streaming on any platform you subscribed to, you could try your hand at borrowing a copy through a reliable DVD service subscription. Now that security is about to be removed, and it’s a scary thing for people whose tastes might not be catered to as frequently through the digital marketplace.
Perhaps this is a sign that the landscape of home-based movie watching will change again. It would be a fantastic time for video stores to resurge, as the convenience of having obscure titles on physical media feels like it’s bound to prompt a renaissance of what’s been seen as a niche practice.
Who knows what the future holds for physical media on the whole, even with studios like Disney recommitting themselves to the cause? All I know is that Disney+ doesn’t rent DVDs, Netflix did; and as of September 29th, 2023, it no longer will. I guess it’s time to start hoarding physical media even more now that this major pillar of movie rentals is about to make what I furiously feel is a huge mistake.
