Netflix Prepares to Send Its Final Red Envelope (lasvegassun.com) 58
An anonymous reader shared this report from the New York Times' media reporter:
In a nondescript office park minutes from Disneyland sits a nondescript warehouse. Inside this nameless, faceless building, an era is ending.
The building is a Netflix DVD distribution plant. Once a bustling ecosystem that processed 1.2 million DVDs a week, employed 50 people and generated millions of dollars in revenue, it now has just six employees left to sift through the metallic discs. And even that will cease on Friday, when Netflix officially shuts the door on its origin story and stops mailing out its trademark red envelopes. "It's sad when you get to the end, because it's been a big part of all of our lives for so long," Hank Breeggemann, the general manager of Netflix's DVD division, said in an interview. "But everything runs its cycle. We had a great 25-year run and changed the entertainment industry, the way people viewed movies at home."
When Netflix began mailing DVDs in 1998 — the first movie shipped was "Beetlejuice" — no one in Hollywood expected the company to eventually upend the entire entertainment industry... At its height, Netflix was the Postal Service's fifth-largest customer, operating 58 shipping facilities and 128 shuttle locations that allowed Netflix to serve 98.5 percent of its customer base with one-day delivery...
Netflix's DVD operations still serve around one million customers, many of them very loyal... To ease the backlash, Netflix is allowing its DVD customers to hold on to their final rentals.
"One hundred people at Netflix still work on the DVD side of the business, though most will soon be leaving the company."
The building is a Netflix DVD distribution plant. Once a bustling ecosystem that processed 1.2 million DVDs a week, employed 50 people and generated millions of dollars in revenue, it now has just six employees left to sift through the metallic discs. And even that will cease on Friday, when Netflix officially shuts the door on its origin story and stops mailing out its trademark red envelopes. "It's sad when you get to the end, because it's been a big part of all of our lives for so long," Hank Breeggemann, the general manager of Netflix's DVD division, said in an interview. "But everything runs its cycle. We had a great 25-year run and changed the entertainment industry, the way people viewed movies at home."
When Netflix began mailing DVDs in 1998 — the first movie shipped was "Beetlejuice" — no one in Hollywood expected the company to eventually upend the entire entertainment industry... At its height, Netflix was the Postal Service's fifth-largest customer, operating 58 shipping facilities and 128 shuttle locations that allowed Netflix to serve 98.5 percent of its customer base with one-day delivery...
Netflix's DVD operations still serve around one million customers, many of them very loyal... To ease the backlash, Netflix is allowing its DVD customers to hold on to their final rentals.
"One hundred people at Netflix still work on the DVD side of the business, though most will soon be leaving the company."
A loss for fans of lesser know TC and Movies (Score:3)
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Torrents.
(Children, 2037) "Hey sweet we're gonna watch a bit of history her...wait did he say 'felony'..?"
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People who exploit torrents for music, TV and movies are invariably the type that bitch and moan that music, TV and movies all suck. If you pay for your entertainment, supporting the entertainment industry, you might find the content improves.
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the type that bitch and moan that music, TV and movies all suck.
No. Bandwidth sucks. Torrents seem to work more reliably than streaming. Particularly if you start the download when the neighborhood sperglords aren't tying up the cable gaming. And then watch the download at your convenience.
Re:A loss for fans of lesser know TC and Movies (Score:5, Informative)
Re:A loss for fans of lesser know TC and Movies (Score:4, Informative)
And then take Willow. Yes, it sucked. But that's no excuse for Disney to then remove it from existence AND get a tax rebate in doing so! If it wasn't for pirate copies there'd be no evidence the show ever existed.
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the industry that's making more than ever?
I don't understand why this incorrect trope keeps getting trotted out.
Disney, Paramount+, Hulu, HBO, etc etc - They are all losing money hand over fist. Hundreds of millions in some cases. It's right there in their earnings reports.
(We can assume the same for Amazon Prime and Apple TV+, but those losses are rolled up, so it's opaque.)
The only one that is profitable is Netflix.
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No, I bitch because stuff keeps moving between streaming services, I can't save stuff locally (DRM-free) for later, if it disappears from said services.
I buy music on bandcamp, games on gog.com, precisely because I download the bits, and can save them. I know of no equivalent for movies/series. I do buy bluray discs (mainly of rare and hard to find movies), but those are not easily archivable. Plus the pain of playing them back on a FLOSS system...
Also not everybody lives in an area with a streaming quality
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When it comes to preservation, piracy is certainly better than nothing, but it's not ideal. A lot of old movies and television programs were shot on film, which is what allows so much of that old content to be presented in HD. The quality you get out of bootleg VHS tapes is terrible. Even DVD remasters aren't great. I recently picked up a 2009 DVD release of the 70's kids show, Land of the Lost, which is so low-quality that it's unwatchable on an HD TV. It's like they over-compressed a rotting Beta tap
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I'm sad to see it go.
I suppose now I'll have figure out how bit torrent works for those movies not at the library.
How did The Expanse end? I guess I can make it a wintertime project.
The Larry Sanders Show (Score:2)
Where can I still, legally, watch The Larry Sanders Show, which is the show that made HBO the company it is today? What a great TV series that was to watch every week. The Netflix DVD catalog options vastly surpassed the online streaming options in terms of quality and selection.
Given my industrial career, getting caught breaking the law even a little isn't worth any risk, no matter how great the TV show is.
...well damn! Just prior to posting this I checked and now The Larry Sanders Show [tvguide.com] is availa
A totem of good times. (Score:2)
RedBox's bid to buy NEtflix's DVD operation (Score:3)
is till a no go...
Sad to hear that.
Will it be Beetlejuice? (Score:2)
Nice way to end an era with.
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It's... SHOWTIME!
Back in my day (Score:1)
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Didn't ask!
Re:Back in my day (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm old fashioned, I guess, I believe it's right to actually pay for my movie collection. Renting doesn't entitle you to a permanent copy.
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DVD.com's terms of use, point 4.h. https://dvd.netflix.com/TermsO... [netflix.com]
You agree not to archive, reproduce, distribute, modify, display, perform, publish, license, create derivative works from, offer for sale, or use content and information contained on or obtained from or through the DVD service.
You may disagree with the fairness of this restriction, but legally, you are bound by it when you sign up to use DVD.com. (And in case it's not crystal clear, DVD.com *is* Netflix DVD.)
In contrast, it *is* considered fair use to record TV shows for your own use.
https://legalbeagle.com/669696... [legalbeagle.com]
So no, the two concepts are not the same, as counterintuitive as that may seem.
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Some of us still believe in the importance of keeping our word.
Yes I know, corporations abuse their customers. But just because someone else does things they shouldn't do, doesn't make it OK for me to do the same. If I do, then I'm just as bad as they are.
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Some things that don't justify stealing:
- Being poor
- Not being able to afford nice things
- Failing to read things you agree to
- Not recalling that you "gave your word"
At some level, you knew you didn't have a right to make copies of that material, but you did it anyway.
Your brilliant warez guy is going to rob your company blind. He'll use his five-finger discount to make off with equipment because he's not rich, he can't afford to buy it, and he doesn't remember giving his word that he would respect the pr
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Just because someone was a teenage scofflaw or small time hacker doesn't mean they won't eventually become a respectable person.
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Oh how I disagree with your list.
The first item is actually a very valid to steal things. The rich people, and I mean old money rich here, how do you think their family got their money in the first place. Stealing from the poor though, that's just bad taste. And that's what the new rich dies, but on an international scale.
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Also have to add, there was this novel by Cixin Liu in his collection: The wandering Earth, that actually made me think this way for real. Because if you take the unassailable possession rights to the bitter end, you end up in a world where one people will own everything, and I mean everything.
And taxes is stealing, we don't call it that, because we think it's fair and right that everybody should pay for that which is used by everybody, because we need some standard of living. But taxes is an entity taking
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Taxation is not stealing, that's absurd. Only the most extreme anarchists hold that view.
As a society, we agree collectively that certain things need to be paid for by everyone collectively. We agree that it's not my job to build the road in front of my house, that's something our government should do. We agree to pay those taxes in order to support those essential government services.
Yes, the government takes money from us--forcibly--but that doesn't make it the same as stealing.
Webster provides some conte
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I might have been unclear. I don't hold that view, I'm so far out on the left that I'm surely right.
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You say taxation is stealing, and that you're on the "left." Those two positions are mutually exclusive, since the "left" believes in big government, that the government is there to take care of us, that it should protect us from all ills. The most extreme form of liberalism, which we call communism, holds that the government (we collectively) should own everything, so effectively the tax rate is 100%. I'm not sure you understand what the term "the left" means.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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And a "rich" person is defined as somebody who is richer than you, of course.
A huge problem with your position, is that there is no bright line that divides people into two groups:
Group 1: People who are rich enough that it's OK to steal from them.
Group 2: People who aren't rich enough that it's OK to steal from them.
Go ahead, tell me what that number X is, where $X + 1 is rich enough to be a legitimate target for theft. And then, tell me why it should be that specific number, and not a number that's $1,000
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I'm old fashioned, I guess, I believe it's right to actually pay for my movie collection. Renting doesn't entitle you to a permanent copy.
Half the reason I went back to piracy. The other half is the "this content is not available in your region" but somehow is "available" to rent for £2 an episode.
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Sorry, just because you don't like the price or availability of something, doesn't make it OK to steal it.
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It also doesn't entitle you to use what you actually bought. "Good news! We've upgraded your purchase to a new "corrected" version of the film that has been edited for modern audiences!"
I hate thinking that I'm turning into my father, but I really am starting to think the good old days were, in fact, actually good.
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Everything comes in cycles. While today's media companies may be abusing customers more than they did a generation ago, there is much, much else better today.
Medical science, GPS navigation, computers, cellphones, wikipedia, the internet, phone call quality and price, I could go on and on. I certainly wouldn't want to go back.
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My first Netflix disc arrived on the same day my first run of blank DVD and my new burner arrived. I took it as a sign.
Where might Netflix ... (Score:3)
Just asking for a friend.
Re:Where might Netflix ... (Score:5, Informative)
Netflix is giving them away. https://www.forbes.com/sites/b... [forbes.com]
Probably because postage is cheaper than disposal.
WHY NOT a library ? (Score:1)
why not donate them to a library ?
Re:WHY NOT a library ? (Score:5, Informative)
why not donate them to a library ?
Because Netflix doesn't have the right to do this. With these final disks, Netflix will still technically always own them and always have the right to demand them back.
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Why not?
It's physical media. If I want to take all my DVDs and BluRays and sell them, I have a perfect right to do so. Why is Netflix any different?
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Why is Netflix any different?
Because Netflix doesn't have full ownership rights in the DVDs.
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DVD (Score:1)
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Yeah, I'm heartbroken. Just can't get a lot of the stuff. Find Battleship Potemkin. Find Sailor of the King. Just a couple of the obscure titles you either won't find on streaming, or have to work your butt off to find. I am really gonna miss those red envelopes.
Shame (Score:2)
All that is left is there poorly written shallow softcore porn that is the cornerstone of just about every other streaming service
Idea: How about we stream them instead! (Score:5, Insightful)
Back around 2000, everybody assumed that one day Netflix would stream their DVD collection instead of mailing it. Instead, they became a movie and TV studio, and the dream died. It is sad that 20+ years later, we've really taken a step backward. Personally, I would rather have a mailing service with everything available than a streaming service with 10% of the content available. Our video Library-of-Alexandria is gone.
Member since 2000 (Score:1)
In the years since I signed up for Netflix Disc, I've moved several times. I've changed jobs several times. I've gotten married, had kids. Netflix has been part of my family longer than most things I own. There may not ever be another source for the potpourri of titles that Netflix Disc carried. Does any streaming service have Heißer Sommer, the East German beach musical? How about Dick Powell's 1937 musical "On the Avenue" or even 1985's "Prizzi’s Honor"? How many services do you need to subscri
Collector item (Score:1)
Hold on to those discs!
I can see how they will sky rocket in value on ebay...