Netflix has mailed out its last DVD
San Francisco, United States - Streaming giant Netflix mailed out its last DVD on Friday, ending the 25-year service that helped the company grow into an entertainment behemoth.
"In 1998, we delivered our first DVD. This morning, we shipped our last," the company said on its website on Friday.
"For 25 years, we redefined how people watched films and series at home, and shared the excitement as they opened their mailboxes to our iconic red envelopes," the statement added.
In April, when the decision to stop DVD rentals was announced, Netflix co-CEO Ted Sarandos said those "iconic" red mailers "changed the way people watched shows and movies at home – and they paved the way for the shift to streaming."
How did the Netflix mailing service work?
Founder Reed Hastings has often mentioned how he started the company in a fit of frustration when a Blockbuster rental store charged him $40 for returning the movie Apollo 13 6 weeks late.
From there, Hastings developed the idea for a subscription-based DVD-by-mail service that let the customer hold onto the title for as long as they wanted.
Once viewed, the DVD was slipped into a red prepaid envelope and sent back to the company, with the subscriber's next choice sent on its way in exchange.
On its site, the company said that the mail service accumulated 40 million unique subscribers throughout its run, mainly in the United States. The streaming platform currently has 238 million subscribers worldwide.
Netflix said that the first movie mailed out was the comedy Beetlejuice and that more than 5.2 billion DVDs have been sent out since then.
The most-rented DVD was reportedly the US sports drama The Blind Side starring Sandra Bullock. The movie, which is about a white family that takes in a Black homeless child, was released in 2009 back when the DVD service was at the height of its popularity.
The Blind Side has since proved controversial after the former NFL star and subject of the film Michael Oher said that the portrayal was exaggerated and filled with inaccuracies.
Cover photo: Netflix