You can only see them on DVD.ĭEL BARCO: Some loyal subscribers say they can't afford streaming services or they live in rural areas without broadband. RYAN: There are many movies that you can't stream on Netflix. There are hundreds more on their queue - old black-and-white movies, documentaries, foreign films, and especially classic Christmas pictures. That's the end of an era - you know, how space age we thought that was when we had our subscription initially.ĭEL BARCO: Ryan says since 2006, she and her wife have rented 418 films from Netflix. But now, as the DVD and Blu-ray disc business wanes, CEO Ted Sarandos announced the service will end on September 29, a real bummer for holdouts like 71-year-old Claire Ryan (ph) in Memphis.ĬLAIRE RYAN: Wow. MICHAEL KEATON: (As Beetlejuice, laughter).ĭEL BARCO: Netflix shipped its first DVD movie, "Beetlejuice."ĭEL BARCO: Since then, the company has shipped 5.2 billion discs by mail and now-iconic red envelopes - not pink - to 40 million subscribers. He mailed it with a 32-cent stamp to Hastings' house, and it arrived the next morning undamaged. If it breaks, it breaks.ĭEL BARCO: So Randolph went out and bought a CD of Patsy Cline's greatest hits and a pink greeting card envelope.
Randolph and Hastings had a hunch DVDs could be the next big thing, and they could ship them to customers by snail mail. There were laser discs, VHS tapes and Betamax. MARC RANDOLPH: (Reading) Neither of us had ever actually seen a DVD.ĭEL BARCO: In the audiobook of his memoir, "That Will Never Work," Randolph says, before 1997, no one outside of Japan owned a DVD player.
The idea was to use the internet - the net - to rent out movies - flicks - to subscribers. MANDALIT DEL BARCO, BYLINE: Before it was a $150 billion streaming service, Netflix was strictly a DVD-by-mail operation created by two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings. Now, maybe that's a no-brainer in this digital age, but not to everybody. After 25 years, Netflix is winding down its business of mailing DVDs to subscribers.
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