In the land prior to streaming, there was a time when getting a Netflix DVD in the mail felt wonderful. Those times have actually largely passed, and soon the service behind it will end, as we covered in April. However on Monday, Netflix revealed that customers can keep any staying DVDs they have after September 29 once the service shuts down. In addition, subscribers can potentially get up to 10 discs totally free as the service clears out its stock.
Further Reading The DVDs-in-the-mail version of Netflix is finally going away after 26 years Nowadays, Netflix handles its DVD rental service through a subsidiary called DVD.com. The DVD amnesty statement came through DVD.com’s X account on Monday, passed on to us by The Verge. In 1997, Netflix released as a pay-per-rental service, however it transitioned to the now-famous membership line system in 1999, where customers make
a list of DVDs they ‘d like to receive, and they would get shipped in order as they appeared. As we noted in April, this business design partially resulted in the collapse of video rental chains. While as soon as popular, the world mostly carried on to streaming video services, and in April of this year, Netflix revealed that it would stop its DVD rental service completely. Further Reading Redditor obtains decommissioned Netflix cache server with 262TB of storage For now, DVD.com is still in operation, and it continues the rental line tradition, but according to its FAQ, the service will ship out its last disc on September 29, 2023. After the final day,
it states that customers will not be charged for any unreturned discs and includes, “Please enjoy them for as long as you like! If you do choose to return the disc, we will continue to accept returns up until October 27th, 2023.”
In addition, Netflix also revealed that subscribers can enter for a chance to get up to 10 extra DVDs listed in their rental line sent by mail to them totally free on the last day of service. With likely countless discs on hand, we suppose that Netflix’s discs have to go somewhere.
If you aren’t a subscriber and wish to get in on a few of the “keepsies” red-envelope DVD action, Netflix states you have up until 11:59 pm Pacific Time on August 28 to register for a DVD strategy. Just keep in mind that the entire thing closes down for good in September.