Confessions of a Netflix DVD Dead-Ender | Hacker News Reader

Confessions of a Netflix DVD Dead-Ender

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I'm a Netflix DVD hold-out. For me it has been the long-tail of Netflix offerings. There is so much new stuff being streamed, and I'm sure Ted Lasso is great, but I want to go to "film school" and see the silent classics, foreign classics, experimental films that pushed the boundaries....

I had no idea Netflix had my entire history. Looks like September 2004 was my first rental, (Tomorrowland: Disc 1, a collection of early Disney TV specials on manned space flight), and I've rented 2355 discs. Wow.

I also understand that on September 29, they mail out the last discs ... and subscribers can keep them. That is a cool farewell gesture I guess.

As a replacement I'd recommend

https://www.criterionchannel.com/

https://mubi.com/

Even as something of a film buff, I find Criterion pretty Euro art house heavy for my taste. It's really not something I'd want a steady diet of.

It has a rotating collections of films on top of its base catalog. It groups the films into featured collections for presentation. I've never found it to be heavy toward any particular genre.

It's my favorite subscription. It's also my favorite app for discovering new movies. Here's what browsing currently looks like:

https://www.criterionchannel.com/browse

I was basing my opinion on both their historical bread and butter and a quick peek at their all films list. But, yes, looking at the browse page it looks broader.

Mubi is amazing. I'm years with it and the variety is stunning.

I still have netflix dvds, although I only get one now and usually take a long time to watch it. But I started January 2001. I bought an expensive (at the time) dlp projector and make a large screen and stand out of blackout liner and some wood from home depot that I would put up in my living room to watch it. My kids were young so I would watch movies in the dark after they went to bed. They still give me a hard time about "Goodbye Dragon Inn" which they say was the worst movie ever, and my daughter cried at the end of the Bicycle Thief. We did not (and still don't) have cable tv so that and VHS tapes was how we got entertainment. I'm not sure when it stopped being a thing for us, but gradually things like Netflix streaming and youtube became more of what we watched. So I don't think I will really miss the service so much but I think I held onto it for more or less nostalgic reasons.

Scarecrow is going to be your best bet for getting all those rare gems, but it is expensive.

https://blog.scarecrow.com/scarecrow-rent-by-mail/

> and subscribers can keep them.

It was not unhead-of for me to receive a disc that was so scratched, cracked, or damaged that I didn't even bother loading it into my machine. I wish you all the best.

> I also understand that on September 29, they mail out the last discs ... and subscribers can keep them.

I don't believe this is correct, or at least wasn't in the quote from a Netflix employee I read in an article a few weeks ago. It said something to the effect of, "Subscribers must still return the final discs. Unfortunately, our licensing with the studios allows for rental, not sale."

Update: It seems that they've changed that policy within the past couple of weeks.

For those in the UK still interested, CinemaParadiso is a really good DVD/Blu-Ray rental service

https://www.cinemaparadiso.co.uk/

I feel like a luddite sometimes but I really love movies and hate the limited selection on streaming. Also, logging into different accounts, dealing with different apps etc is a pain in the arse.

I use CinemaParadiso. I thought Lovefilm was the only game in town. But I searched Google for 'UK DVD rental' and found CinemaParadiso. I signed up. That was 6 months ago. Now I watch about 3 disks a week and love the variety.

Just to clarify: I was a big fan of Lovefilm with 4 disks at once, but Amazon shut it down.

Just a note: CinemaParadiso has been a private company since 2003 so basically, it is unlikely to be shut down like Lovefilm. This means it will likely be around another 20 years.

Edit: CP changed to CinemaParadiso

You really shouldn't use that acronym. People might get the wrong idea.

Only if they're being intentionally obtuse. Do those people also object to the Unix copy command? Or HDCP? There's only 676 two letter acronyms so of course there's collisions

I think there will always be a market for this. Maybe not a big one, but surely there are enough people out there who just want to stick a disc in the player and press play, rather than sign up to loads of different services.

You may also want to check the local library, too. They don’t deliver, but with inter library loan they’ve been able to eventually get almost anything I’ve wanted.

The library is the best for this kind of stuff. If I can't find a torrent of something I'll take it out on loan from the library on DVD and rip it.

Without people such as yourself I genuinely fear for our cultural history.

I’m quite sad by the number of not-quite indie films that apparently go direct to digital and never get any physical release at all.

At some point we’re going to lose things.

Disney made a movie, 'Crater', released it exclusively on Disney+ then pulled it 50 days later.

Their own film!

I loved how huge Netflix's DVD catalog was.

To return closer to that, is any service yet providing a unified interface to all the streaming catalogs? (In which all titles in all services are in a "flat namespace" in the UI, not first selecting a streaming service in the UI and then browsing within that one service.)

For movies letterboxd does this quite nicely but it's a small part of the service rather than central. But any movie has a 'where to watch' section with links to the movies on berries platforms, if you're subscribed of course. This is powered by a third party service, JustWatch, which might work for you - they do seem to have their own thing, not just an API

I think Plex would be the closest to this.

Some streaming boxes will do exactly that; both Apple’s and Amazon’s will, and perhaps others. For example, if you search for a movie or TV show on Fire TV or in the Apple TV app (on that box) it’ll show you the title and what services currently have it available. Searching for Stranger Things and House on Apple TV, for example, return links into Netflix or the Prime Video app (where I’ve been watching the latter).

Is Netflix available in there now? They were famously absent for the first few years of that feature.

On which one? On Amazon FireTV devices it does link into the Netflix app. It works well enough that to e.g. continue watching series on Netflix I rarely open the Netflix app because they're visible directly in the FireTV interface.

No, Netflix (EDIT: in some European markets) doesn't push that data into the Apple TV's TV app, but that's fault of Netflix.

If you search for “House of Cards” on the TV app, it will show Netflix as an option. Universal search works with Netflix.

It doesn't work for me, and I'm logged into NF. They just discriminate UX based on residence.

In the US at least, Netflix works for search, but it doesn’t show up in the “continue watching” list. I don’t understand their motivation for that. And it means I often end up forgetting I’m watching a Netflix show because I don’t see “continue” until I end up back in Netflix.

Netflix has very little interest in participating in this (to be honest I expect some of the others see it as a temporary arrangement to build share that they will pull out of at a later point too).

They have agreed to do it in a few cases (such as Sky's set-top boxes in the UK), but I imagine that an awful lot of money was required to facilitate that.

For bigger players the gain in traffic from participating is smaller than the loss from people drifting outside of your app to watch something else.

Also from bitter experience, you will find that what is supposed to happen in search when a title is on two different services and which gets priority generally results in such scorched Earth warfare that these arrangements tend to fall apart quite quickly.

I was just thinking about how streaming is basically cable all over again.

At first, Netflix was really the only game in town

Now there is's Prime (with it's multitude of premium subscriptions), Max, Disney, Hulu, Espn+, Crunchyroll, etc etc.

Netflix being the only game in town is also cable because that's a monopoly. We called them cable monopolies. You're describing competition, and that's good. Just look at how Netflix has been raising prices and blocking account sharing. They would raise prices even more if you couldn't go "I'll cancel and go to Disney+ instead".

Cable monopolies didn’t actually produce content, they had a distribution monopoly but different cable companies all had HBO etc. The biggest issue most people had with cable was the bundling, they would have a few channels you might like alongside dozens you didn’t but needed to pay for them collectively. And with streaming nothing changed, D+ has 1 or 2 shows I might be interested in, so does Netflix, and Hulu, and etc etc.

Net result spend 100+$ per month to have a decent chance of finding something interesting, rotate subscriptions, or even better just skip them all as crap.

I don’t know why streaming services have so consistently failed to produce good content rather than simply being mildly interesting, but I suspect it relates to how captive their audience is. Shows need to be actively bad before you swap to something else else because it’s all asynchronous. The threshold for success drops from actively engaging to mildly interesting.

I have more streaming subscriptions than are probably justified by the amount I watch, can't be bothered to manage rotating, and buy some a la carte and I still pay probably half of what a cable TV only subscription would cost me. I give up live TV but that was something I rarely watched.

And it's not like cable TV carried everything, including movies, I wanted to watch anyway.

To be fair I include the cost of internet when comparing them as cable TV included the physical connection.

Anyway, it’s clear Cable had issues, my point is more streaming doesn’t seem to be a real improvement once you start looking for new content.

Use justwatch.com

Try JustWatch, it's the closest I've found.

How does that site work? Do you still pay for every individual subscription?

I just tells you where a movie, series, etc. is available in your country. It shows streaming, buy and rent options, and the prices where applicable. You still need to go to the service yourself to watch it.

I have the JustWatch app, it's very useful, but as far as I know it is only an index of where to find particular videos? Maybe if you have an Android TV (I don't) and install it then it takes you direct to the service. But, personally you pay for each service individually.

Personally, I would alter copyright to create a "most favoured nation" style payment system.

If you provide works to one distributor then any distributor can pay you that price and have access to the work.

Giving copyright holders monopoly control of if works are sold, and a monopoly to the revenue, but not a monopoly over the route from them to consumers.

Exclusivity would be allowed, let's say 3 years (certainly less than 5, minimum of one).

Same across all media. But then I'd also limit copyright terms to 20 years (same as patents).

> I loved how huge Netflix's DVD catalog was.

I used to use the DVD service and the films I rented were across a much broader spectrum than is available via streaming subscription, especially considering the recommendation engine on the streaming services seem to be geared towards pushing the shows the service spent the most money on.

It is still possible to find smaller indie films & documentaries online, just other places. Worth noting that membership at your public libraries often gives you access to a streaming service for films, media, ebooks and audio books and these often have a wide range of content.

The best part of old Netflix was it's suggestions system that was fairly good at finding more things you'd like.

Amazon video seems to do that. Sometimes I will search something on Amazon and it will pop up asking if I have HBO credentials or whatever.

I am not sure if every model has the feature, but my Rokus have a search feature which works to find the movie/show from all the available services.

The closest thing I have found is ReelGood. They let you pick all your services and search, browse, etc. Handles cases where multiple providers have the same content pretty gracefully. Your authentication creds don’t talk to Reelgood, so they’re deeplinking as closely as they can to each provider’s content page. For instance if Yellowstone is streaming on paramount plus and Hulu I’m presented with buttons for each, which will launch on those respective providers. I’ve only ever seen a URL be wrong once, and I use Reelgood almost every day. I also wrote a TamperMonkey script that embeds a show/movie’s rotten tomatoes score on the page to help optimize chances of whether I’ll enjoy it or not. I find this really helpful as opposed to switching between streaming sites or apps.

Not perfect but pretty good. Plex are attempting something similar but I was less impressed when I tried theirs. that was over a year ago, though

The Apple TV app on Apple TV seems to show me prime and Disney plus items somehow.

Amazon video seems to do that. Sometimes I will search something on Amazon and it will pop up asking if I have HBO credentials or whatever.

> If I have a DVD at home when the site shuts down, do I just get to keep it? The company’s emails haven’t said.

Late in August the reporting[0][1] said that Netflix DVD subscribers could keep any DVDs they have at the time of shutdown, as well as applying[2] to receive some extra discs

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-customers-can-keep-d...

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/netflix-mail-service-sending...

[2] https://twitter.com/dvdnetflix/status/1692240971659108448

$50 million back in the early 2000s. That was how much Netflix was worth when Blockbuster was made an offer to buy it. They rejected it. Could've been a different world if Yahoo and Blockbuster weren't so afraid of change. Sad to see the end of the DVD era... kind of makes you wonder why we put so much faith in the digital cloud, for one day, maybe we will only be able to play DVDs. Then again... can't be afraid of change.

How different would it really be though? Different name of the conpany, but I think it otherwise would not be that different today.

Likely BlockBuster could have been more stable and financed the stores for longer if they wanted to. As late as pre-corona-pandemic there were lots of little independent rental stores specialising in the one niche still available - blockbuster BluRays (and DVDs!) with what had just left the local theaters, but weren't yet widely available on streaming services.

During the pandemic there was a pause in theatrical releases and the little rental chains couldn't weather that, so they disappeared.

But yeah, not that different from today.

> During the pandemic there was a pause in theatrical releases and the little rental chains couldn't weather that, so they disappeared.

Funny enough the pandemic was the reason I canceled my Netflix DVD subscription.

During the early days there was no information about how it spread. The DVDs are sanitized (wiping finger prints, etc.) but I wasn't sure about the sleeves. I know a number of organic things can survive for over a year without a host (fuck you ringworm) so I wanted to play it safe.

As a mail carrier during the outbreak I was deemed essential and forced to work 6 days a week. The volume increased 3 or 4 fold since everyone was at home. I touched many thousands of packages and much more mail, it took me 3 years to catch the COVID and I got it from my brother's family at Thanksgiving.

In a world of increasing rents, video-rental stores would have faced pressure regardless of the pandemic. And in some particularly high-rent locations, video rental moved from a store staffed with employees to automated kiosks already in the first decade of the new millennium.

Redbox is still a reasonable option for mainstream recent releases but it does mean you have to commit to watching something tonight and return it the next day-ish. Netflix was nice in that it had a huge back catalog and, when you got a disk in the mail, it was fine if you didn't watch it for a week.

At the end of the day, there are alternatives but, if you liked watching a variety of movies, Netflix DVD was a pretty low friction way of doing so.

The last rental place in my city converted to be a fancy candy and snacks store, also selling Funko Pops etc. Nothing changed except the shelves of newly released movies now stock funko pops.

Or we might have a bunch of other streaming provider none of them in any way directly related to Blockbuster/Netflix.

If Blockbuster had bought Netflix, would we even have streaming or original Netflix programming?

In my country DVD rental is different set of laws and rules, and when you used to rent DVD, you did not need to go to Disney's DVD rental to rent Marvel movies, and to HBO's rental house to rent DC movies. Life was much simplier backdays. Of course now you don't even need to move a muscle, other than finger, to get new movie in 0 seconds, but also you need to pay monthly huge amount of money for the 3 movies you watch monthly, because you have have kids, work etc.

Renting 3 movies a month on Amazon has no subscription fee and is at least as cheap as the old days of going to the local video store

Yeah I tire of this annoying nostalgia.

I remember how expensive it was to rent things from Videoland. I remember how expensive it was to buy box sets of TV shows at Free Record Shop. Trust me Netflix is still a million times better.

I remember my friends and I getting stoned in high school and renting every Disney cartoon feature film. Since they were old releases they cost us $1 each. I think we spent $13 in total. We spent more on the pot and candy.

When were you in high school? Blockbuster cut prices near the end as it was dying to try to compete with Netflix and Redbox.

1995ish

My local store was £2.50 a night in the early 1990s. That’s £6 a night today. By the late 90s it was £3.50, about £7.50 a night today.

Except that most stuff I’d want to watch isn’t available on $streaming_service, and often enough on none of them.

The rental fees, except some premium new rentals, are about the same as Blockbuster rentals. Cheaper if you account for inflation. No late fees, either, and no “We wanted to rent the latest Kevin Smith movie, but they were out of copies…”

I do miss the experience of browsing the aisles like a library. None of the streaming services have a good browsing interface. None.

What would a good browsing interface be like?

Ability to filter out already watched entries would be a massive improvement.

That's a wonderful question I too wonder the answers for. It was fun to cruise around the isles and see what you could find to watch for the weekend vs your friend or partner and then get popcorn and other snacks.

Not what Netflix has going on, that’s for sure. Lemme look by years, genres, ratings. Browse collections by actors, directors, studios - bonus points if I can look by things like “What movies/shows have both of these actors?”

Netflix’s interface used to be decent, but it has declined a lot.

IMO, Netflix is making a mistake by not caring that a group of their loyal customers are upset by this move. Sure it costs them money to ship these disks and replace them when broken,but come on, they can more then afford it! And they can always raise the price in the name of satisfying the customers.

I've been a streamer and disker for years, but as of September 30th I'm firing Netflix because there are better streaming options, I only stayed because of the DVD's.

You answered your own question at "it costs them money".

They cannot afford it, they are an eternal growth company. They will optimize their revenue until they attain total enshittification.

They have the DVD rental costs under COGS instead of marketing.

I suspect the DVD renters are among Netflix’s best ambassadors; they’re all being fired.

Can they afford to sell it at least, cmon? There is something seriously wrong with what is being taught in finance.

It's like you have an asset, it has a revenue stream, it's probably profitable, so why the ^#%#%@ are you getting rid of it.

I’m a happy customer of Videobuster (Germany though) for DVD renting. Especially this model of „maintain a wish list“. It is much easier to pick something as a group if the choice is limited by availability.

One of my least favorite activities was wandering through a video store going, “Nope, nope, nope.”

I have 400 in my queue. If I forget to move a recent interest to the top when I return a disk, something interesting will show up.

And I love the low pressure. I can have an unmatched disk lying on the table for months, and there is no urgency to return it.

the best alternative to dvd netflix that ive found is dvd-inbox.com. its a guy who sells dvds and blurays on ebay who is starting a netflix clone. you can upload your netflix queue (netflix allows you to download all your data including your queue) to the website currently.

https://dvdinbox.com

Netflix trimmed my queue shortly after announcing their closure, removing the entire "Saved" portion of titles they knew about, but didn't have. I re-prioritized my list as well, removing titles I knew I didn't want badly enough and weren't going to arrive in time.

Thanks for the link, looking carefully at subscribing.

Wow thank you for the link!

I couldn’t see on their website anywhere if they also rent 4K UHD discs.

they are extremely responsive on twitter and email if you wanted to ask. i have ralked with them about offering higher value discs, UHD and rare titles. i am optimistic that they will be offering everything they might sell on ebay including UHD.

Sad. When the option became available, I switched to 8 discs out at a time.

Here’s where I also rent from. They have many items. Sadly they limit rentals to a fixed number each month. USA store.

https://www.store-3d-blurayrental.com/

I haven't even seen a DVD player in years. Surprised to hear that the service still existed.

If you see Xbox or PlayStation you see dvd/blue ray player too

Unless you have the models that do not have a disc drive. Even those are going digital only.

On the low end. On the highend it's different because you basically need a gaming console's worth of hardware for 4K Blu-Ray - the few standalone players rapidly died because they cost as much as a PS5 anyway.

Sony was really smart to include movie playback in their consoles, it's a really good value proposition. I bought my PS2 to play DVDs and play games. I eventually upgraded to the PS3 to upgrade to Blu-Ray and still use it today. I recall reading/hearing somewhere that the PS3 was one of the best quality Blu-Ray players at the time. I would assume the PS5 would still be a good pick for 4K Blu-Ray.

Pat is the 4K player.

if you have a desktop computer, it's easy to buy a dvd and put it in the case...

I don't think I've seen a desktop with a dvd reader in years. I couldn't even install one in mine if I wanted to, it's all just fans on the front.

Or plug one in via USB. In fact a lot of PCs still have them as standard, though it is becoming less common¹.

But I suspect the post you are relying to was specifically referring to set-top² DVD players attached to TV sets. They are indeed becoming less common as people stream/download content more than they buy/rent physical disks. I have such a DVD player though it currently does nothing as the "new"⁴ TV has no SCART socket and I've not got around to replacing the DVD player³ and may never do.

[1] with high end gaming rigs doing away with the 5.25" slots in favour of extra fan/radiator mounting options, people doing self-builds not bothering to add one, and mini-desktop units being too small

[2] a misnomer these days since such devices more usually live under TVs, as modern TVs don't provide the huge storage shelf on top that CRT based sets offered in their day!

[3] or getting a SCART->HDMI adaptor

[4] about six months in service now

Most computer cases sold today don't have any 5.25" bays.

My laptop has one and USB connected players are cheap as well.

It only makes sense because of how fragmented the streaming libraries are.

With Netflix DVD you can order any movie, regardless of the studio who published it. No need to go to "Disney DVD" to rent a Star Wars movie.

Anyone know of a good place one can buy blu rays and DVDs for a good price that has a good selection?

I’m talking new if possible but great condition used works too. I like buying complete seasons of shows and I hate having to scour for them

Amazon is surprisingly not great alot of the time. I’m trying to build up some physical media collection for shows I enjoy over and over

Ebay?

Movie Trading Company - https://movietradingcompany.com/

IRL if you can - they're awesome.

The one in Dallas is huge. Like a gamestop for dvds but the size of a warehouse. It is pretty close to a Half-priced books, same concept but books, and hitting the two of them back to back is a fun way to spend a day.

I know you said buy - but the public library has a good collection (at least where I live).

I miss the Seattle Public Library!

I COVID-moved out here to Dogpatch with the DPL's tiny permanent collection and 3 InterLibrary Loan requests at a time.

It makes me want to be a hoarder.

I've found charity shops good for DVDs and CDs, if only because every so often someone with the same taste gets rid of their collection so you end up with a little cache of "you may also like" but created by an actual human.

The local used-media store (2nd & Charles) isn't buying right now because they have cartons of DVDs/Blurays in their back room and no more space for more. So they ought to be willing to discount. I've never gotten a bad disc from them.

https://www.2ndandcharles.com/movies-video-games-more-dvd-bl...

I haven't gone in a long time but I used to like buying DVDs at Bookoff. Its a japanese second hand shop but they had a good selection of English language dvds and cds. It looks like they only have locations in Southern California and New York.

DVD's are like $1-2 each now used, what's the benefit of a subscription service?

Out of curiosity, are there any spies that read hacker news?

Yes, there are a few.

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