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Entertainment Technology

2.7 Million Americans Still Get Netflix DVDs in the Mail (cnn.com) 123

Posted by msmash from the closer-look dept.
Remember when Netflix used to be a DVD-by-mail company? Well, for 2.7 million subscribers in the US, it still is. From a report: The familiar red envelopes have been arriving in customers' mailboxes since 1998 and helped earn the company a healthy $212 million profit last year. Why are so many people still using this old-school service in the age of streaming? There are a number of reasons. Streaming Netflix video requires a lot of bandwidth -- so much so that Netflix consumes 15% of all US internet bandwidth, according to a 2018 industry report. But many rural areas of the country remain without broadband access. The Federal Communications Commission estimates 24 million Americans fall on the wrong side of this digital divide. The US Postal Service, however, can reach every ZIP code with those red envelopes. One such customer is Dana Palmateer, who lives in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

"Streaming movies was a no-go, so I just went with the disc service that Netflix offers," she says. "As all of us are doing it in these parts." But Netflix also has plenty of DVD customers in urban areas who prefer the service for its convenience and selection of movies, spokeswoman Annie Jung says. "People assume that our customers must either be super seniors or folks that live in the boonies with no internet access," she says. "Actually, our biggest hot spots are the coasts, like the Bay Area and New York." In 2017, the number of people who subscribed to Netflix's DVD subscription was about 4 million.
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2.7 Million Americans Still Get Netflix DVDs in the Mail More

2.7 Million Americans Still Get Netflix DVDs in the Mail

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  • I still get them (Score:5, Informative)

    by b0bby ( 201198 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @01:17PM (#58391000)

    There are a lot of obscure movies and documentaries which are still not easily available streaming. The one at a time plan is fine for me, and I can get any of the oddball stuff reasonably quickly, which is better than not at all.

    • Re:I still get them (Score:5, Informative)

      by rolias ( 2473422 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @01:23PM (#58391040)
      Me too. Not even obscure stuff. Other production are so stingy with letting Netflix carry their content, and want me to subscribe to their own streaming services. I'd just as soon wait for it to hit Bluray and get it from Netflix. Their disc library is much bigger than their streaming library.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by b0bby ( 201198 )

        Yeah, I have Netflix and Prime (mostly for shipping) and I'm not going to subscribe to any other services. There's way more content available than I have time to watch anyway. The kids sometimes watch some reality nonsense on their friend's Hulu account, but I'm not going to actively support that!

        • Same here. My limit is two streaming services and the DVD option fills in missing parts between those two. Even if it requires a little more patience.

          • Yeah, I have a couple of those red envelopes gathering dust by my television as well... I really need to watch those sometime.

            Unfortunately Netflix seems to be actively culling their DVD/Blu-Ray library as much as they do with their third party streaming content. About a quarter of what’s in my (rather long) disc queue has flipped from “available now” or “short wait” to “not available” over the past two or three years.

            • I've noticed that too, I suppose that their license agreement for discs is not that far off from streaming ... physically possessing the discs doesn't give them a right to rent them.

              I've also seen a transition to what appears to be mostly self printed discs lately. 10-15 years ago most of the discs from them were the same as the ones I'd get in retail, lots of my discs arrive with heavy wear too.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It's not even the oddball stuff. If you want a current release movie you have a small chance you can stream it on Netflix, otherwise you're paying for a rental somewhere else. A movie a week streaming rentals vs DVD rentals is about a wash when it comes to cost so a DVD plan is a good compliment to streaming.

      • Exactly. Netflix never offered their DVD-by-mail service in the UK and Amazon bought and killed the largest company that did, but Cinema Paradiso still exists and has a wide library. I also subscribe to Netflix, but we use Cinema Paradiso to get recent films and TV shows that aren't on Netflix. This seems to be getting worse as content producers are worried about Amazon and Netflix's increasing domination of the distribution channel. Meanwhile, pretty much every film and every TV series that has a moder

    • Re:I still get them (Score:5, Informative)

      by bob4u2c ( 73467 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @01:29PM (#58391084)
      Came here to say the same thing. The DVD catalog is way bigger than the streaming catalog.

      I still stream a bunch of recent stuff, but for classic shows and movies DVD is still king.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by btroy ( 4122663 )
      Same reason for us. Movies not normally available to stream. Many of them are classics.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      There are a lot of obscure movies and documentaries which are still not easily available streaming.

      Yep, I was gonna say the same. The DVD/BR selection is massively larger than the streaming selection. So much that I don't understand why anybody picks streaming.

      Netflix DVD/BR has more or less, every movie ever put on physical media, where streaming customers have seen TV series disappear from under them in the middle of watching the series. Seriously? That seems like a good idea to people?

      • That used to be true. I just cut off my subscription this last month. Everything was either unavailable, long wait, or very long wait. They are sending out bad discs and not restocking. You see their old cast-offs by the hundreds at Dollar General. Their profit is in selling off their old discs and collecting subscription fees from people who don't care about seeing specific movies.

        It is going to be cheaper for me to do streaming rentals than to rearrange my queue to get movies that I want to see.

    • I still have the 3 at once disc plan --

      Much more content available by disc vs Netflix/Prime streaming.

      I love Amazon's digital "purchase"* options and "own" a few dozen movies and shows that way, but they are also often horribly overpriced vs disc purchase options -- most of the 20-40 year old movies I want can be bought for $5-10, but their streaming versions are still $15-20, or $4 for a 24-48 hour rental. Meanwhile for $15/mo I generally turn over 8-10 discs a month from Netflix DVD, and I can hang on to

      • but similarly if my purchased disc fails I have nothing too.

        Unless you back it up. A typical DVD is 6-7GB. You can fit a couple of hundred of them (using dvdbackup, just strip the CSS and store the VOBs, no reencoding) on a 1TB hard disk. 4TB NAS disks cost about £100, add a second one for mirroring and that's about 60p for the space to back up one DVD. As an added bonus, you can then watch it without ever getting it out of the box and so you can store the shiny disks somewhere safe and use them as the backups.

  • The non-streaming catalog is (was) greater and does not disappear due to arbitrary license expirations. Breakage, non-replacement, and tailing-off of new purchases is what is driving down the service value now.

    • Re:Better catalog depth (Score:5, Informative)

      by jeff4747 ( 256583 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @02:26PM (#58391372)

      The non-streaming catalog is (was) greater and does not disappear due to arbitrary license expirations.

      Still is, and first sale doctrine means studios can't yank their titles from the mail version.

  • I have a streaming Netflix account, and I get the two DVDs at a time disc-in-the-mail service. The streaming is good for TV series and specialty Netflix material, but the range of films available for streaming is tiny compared to what's available on disc. Foreign films, documentaries, obscure films, so much stuff not available to stream. Probably licensing issues. So I do both.

  • Quality and selection is unmatched (Score:5, Interesting)

    by lexman098 ( 1983842 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @01:23PM (#58391038)
    I have a gigabit connection, but I prefer blu-rays for media. Streaming doesn't offer nearly the quality or selection. It's cheaper than signing up for a bunch of different streaming services too, especially if you're willing to wait for the TV stuff.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ffkom ( 3519199 )
      Same here. The physical disc rental service has more than 20 times the number of distinct movies available than any of the "streaming services", plus the UHD-disks they rent out look superb, no comparison to the compression artifact mush the streaming services deliver.

  • Netflix DVDs or bust. (Score:3)

    by BenFenner ( 981342 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @01:24PM (#58391042)
    I have 60-100 movies and TV shows in my DVD queue at any given time. Netflix tells me which are streaming (to try to get me to sign up for their streaming service). There are easily less than 1% on my list available streaming at any given time. Their streaming catalog is almost useless to me.

    I pay for 3 discs at a time, and I'd pay for 4 if they'd let me.

  • Originally had a 2-at-a-time disk subscription, in addition to the streaming. Basically, I'd rent the first few disks of a set, and decide whether it was worth buying or not.

    But I dropped the disk subscription completely when I reached the point that every series I wanted to check was missing the first or second disk of the set. It's simpler to just buy what looks interesting when it pops up on sale at Walmart or Amazon (movies), or RightStuf (anime).

  • I still get Netflix DVDs (Score:5, Informative)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @01:33PM (#58391114)
    Though Netflix's service has deteriorated, and the DVD inventory is getting pretty poor. For example, only one or two seasons of a 8-season TV show. Even worse, a show that was most popular in its time, Cheers, is not even available on DVD from Netflix. Cheers!?!?!? Delivery time is up to two days in each direction now because distribution centers have been shut down. To me it looks as if Netflix is just soaking the DVD customers for all they can.
    • An addendum --- I won't be going to Netflix for streaming because of the poor manner in which they have been treating the DVD customers who initially built the company...

      • I wouldn't ding Netflix for that, a while ago they separated DVD Netflix into a separate company.

        I agree with you about DVD service getting a bit worse over time (some series do not have many discs, sometimes discs have been arriving a day later than they used to for me), but the streaming part is really separate and has so much great stuff I would still try it if I were you.

        • That's like not blaming Alphabet for anything Google does. It's a wholly owned subsidiary.

          • That's like not blaming Alphabet for anything Google does.

            Exactly, my thought is the management is pretty independent so in fact I would not blame Alphabet for what Google did at all... it totally a different management so why should I take my anger out on people who have no say?

            I personally think it's unfair to punish a company that is doing a great job, just because they have company "siblings" if you were, that are slackers.

    • This is exactly why I canceled last month. That and I have been to busy to watch and realized I paid something like $50 to rent one movie.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Though Netflix's service has deteriorated, and the DVD inventory is getting pretty poor. For example, only one or two seasons of a 8-season TV show. Even worse, a show that was most popular in its time, Cheers, is not even available on DVD from Netflix. Cheers!?!?!? Delivery time is up to two days in each direction now because distribution centers have been shut down. To me it looks as if Netflix is just soaking the DVD customers for all they can.

      Well, you have to admit that Netflix is simply seeing what's

      • ..Well, you have to admit that Netflix is simply seeing what's happening ...

        You conflate two unrelated issues. Yes, the general public is buying less physical media, but the general public is not who is subscribing to Netflix DVD service. Why doesn't Netflix replace damaged discs for those paying customers who want to continue to use the service? Going back to my example, Cheers is a classic comedy, some say among the best written comedies. Yet it is absent from Netflix. To me it looks as if Netflix wants their DVD customers to just go away. So why doesn't Netflix just shu

  • We have both a DVD and streaming subscription. There is a lot of content only available on DVD. We've basically watched the streaming content of interest, but have a long DVD queue we are slowing going through 1 disc at a time.

  • Selection, Selection, Selection (Score:3)

    by stevegee58 ( 1179505 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @01:42PM (#58391170) Journal
    I have eclectic taste in movies and they're almost never available streaming. I always have a NFLX movie at home ready to watch and the titles will almost certainly never be available streaming.

  • Netflix DVD subscribers might increase (Score:3)

    by Dan667 ( 564390 ) on Friday April 05, 2019 @01:47PM (#58391196)
    Now that idiots at all the companies are all trying to make an exclusive streaming service that I'll never buy DVDs allow me to watch that content.

    • Yeah, I didn't think of that. Now that Disney is coming up with their own streaming service, there is a good chance that all of that content will no longer be available on Netflix streaming.

  • Streaming isn't the only option (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Rural communities sometimes lack access to good internet services, also some people just don't buy a internet package that can do streaming well. They are stuck with a bad DSL provider with varied speeds. Red Box's popular around my area and I see them used frequently. Were lucky to have access to a broadband provider which has good speed. We stream much of our content now.
    But my wife a teacher has many students who has no internet at home because its probably too expensive.

  • Some, though perhaps not all of the 2.7 million are also actively choosing what they want to watch rather than selecting from a scroll-able menu, and many awesome movies from more than a year ago are just not available online. In these cases, there's the disk option. You can get it delivered to your office, or you can go to Bend, Oregon. Mil Gracias Netflix.
  • My wife still gets the dvd plan (streaming as well) since she likes to watch a lot of indie movies that aren't available for streaming.

  • There are SO many things I couldn't find on Netflix to stream... Random mentions of a 20-40 year old movie that "I gotta check out!", courtesy of a friend or co-worker, for example. But on physical DVD, they seem to have just about anything I can think of to rent.

    • For a 20-40 year old movie, you could buy a used copy for under $5. You will probably come out ahead.

  • I'm on the one at a time plan but I have kept it because there's still so much stuff not on streaming.

    On top of that there's also the fact that if you care about picture quality, no streaming service that I'm aware of can match blurays right now, and even DVDs still often have better shadow quality in the shadows and other areas.

  • I've signed up with a DVD by mail company after waiting in vain for the next seasons of a few things I want to watch.

  • ..when you are looking for an old movie that the local video stores do not have and it is not streaming.

    They will have titles that other places don't.

  • The explanation does not preclude the first or second assumption.

  • This summary seems to imply that most people just use the streaming service. But the streaming catalog is very limited. I just randomly searched and find that the Marvel movies aren't there (I looked for Iron Man - no 1, 2, or 3), I can't find anything Disney. I just looked up my favorite 80's classics (Ghostbusters, Back to the Future) and 90's (The Matrix).

  • Netflix's disc rental service gets newly released DVDs and Blurays long before the streaming side does (even though the studios have punished Netflix with several month delays to disc access compared to the discs being available at retail). And streaming availability comes and goes at the whims of the studio holders, where discs stay on the service until the physical media gets destroyed.

  • Why are so many people still using this old-school service in the age of streaming?

    Probably because the selection of actual good movies on Netflix is almost non-existent? There are times browsing through Netflix to find a movie to watch that I wish I still had their DVD service, which (back when I used it) had a great movie selection.

  • I swear this was a thread like 2 months ago, not sure why these keep getting submitted.

    I joined netflix in early 1999, Blockbuster had a miniscule DVD section at the time and the rule of VHS was just losing it's crown.
    Netflix had a huge selection compared to them. I was on a 4 disk at a time plan until a couple years back (dropped to 2+Stream).

    The thing is because of licensing and streaming rights, there's still a lot more content available on physical media vs streaming. The biggest issue now is th
  • I almost forgot the old "Burn and Return" or "rip and flip" days. Sigh.
  • Just about all my movie and TV needs are met. THings are going out of print on DVD though, and I don't know what I'll do when physical media is no longer a thing.

  • Amazon sells all the physical DVDs already, and has the delivery infrastructure already. They could have a catalog with every movie in it, just by buying from their own inventory when someone wants to rent a previously-unrented DVD. And it'd be a great backup for their lackluster Prime video streaming selection.

    Perhaps they're just afraid of cannibalizing their DVD sales.

  • I used to get lots of AOL CDs in the mail which made great drink coasters. I'm getting low on coasters so I need to give Netflix my address.

  • Everything missing from streaming is on disc. You can get entire series or seasons at once. No streaming artifacts.

  • Realistically, I'm not sure if I should be counted or not, because I don't think we've had a DVD delivered from Netflix in at least 6 months...because that's how long we've had the same 2 discs sitting on the TV stand waiting to be watched ...

  • Well, I did anyway until a little over a year ago. I wasn't really paying attention to my bill closely and I was wondering what they would charge me for the disc I couldn't return because I couldn't find it. AFAIK, they didn't charge me for it when I cancelled, but maybe I just wasn't paying attention closely enough.

    I hadn't mailed discs for quite a while before I cancelled. I can't keep up with the streaming stuff. Some of it's great, some mediocre. It's a lot of stuff though.

    And some of it's mindless

  • How many of the 2.7 million are due to "grandfather clause" with "Unlimited devices" when you paid the extra for streaming.....::cough:: 2004!

  • Special features aren't usually available with streaming options -- commentary tracks, behind the scenes features, deleted scenes, etc...

    My assumption is that discs are a dying option because pirating them is trivial and storing the copies is getting cheaper.

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