Today, the final Netflix DVD envelope will go out, marking an end to the service that launched the business that became a streaming giant and changed the entertainment industry.
“On September 29th, 2023, we will send out the last red envelope. It has been a true pleasure and honor to deliver movie nights to our wonderful members for 25 years. Thank you for being part of this incredible journey, including this final season of red envelopes,” said the company in an X post earlier this year.
In April, Netflix announced that it would wind down its DVD mail service. It said that part of its business continues to shrink.
After around a decade of offering DVD rentals via the mail, Netflix started its streaming service in 2007.
“Netflix is introducing a service to deliver movies and television shows directly to users’ PCs, not as downloads but as streaming video, which is not retained in computer memory,” explained The New York Times that year. “The service, which is free to Netflix subscribers, is meant to give the company a toehold in the embryonic world of Internet movie distribution.”
According to Fortune, the first DVD shipped by the company was a copy of Tim Burton’s 1988 film “Beetlejuice” in 1998, when most people headed to Blockbuster or Hollywood video for their rentals. However, the outlet said that Netflix’s founders always planned to sunset the service.
“From Day One, we knew that DVDs would go away, that this was transitory step,” co-founder Marc Randolph said, according to Fortune. “And the DVD service did that job miraculously well. It was like an unsung booster rocket that got Netflix into orbit and then dropped back to earth after 25 years. That’s pretty impressive.”
At first, Netflix offered existing movies and TV shows to its subscribers via streaming. Then, it started producing its own content in 2012 with “Lillehammer”.
“A seminal moment in Netflix history began in a recording studio by the North Sea. Bergen is where Norwegian creators Eilif Skodvin and Anne Bjørnstad approached Stevie Van Zandt about a show they wrote for him set in a small Norwegian town called Lillehammer,” said Ted Sarandos, Co-CEO and Chief Content Officer of Netflix, in a blog post about the origins of the show starring the E Street Band member. “A few months later, having heard that Netflix was looking for original content, I got a call directly from Stevie, who wanted to send us the series.”
Since then, Netflix productions have won awards and become top-rated shows.
As of this July, Netflix had an estimated 238.4 million subscribers globally, per TechCrunch. Netflix’s impact on the entertainment industry has even been blamed for the recent Hollywood writer’s strike, according to Axios.
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