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Comment by JKCalhoun | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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/

> 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.

> 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.

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