It’s unclear how much longer Netflix will keep its DVD service operating. The company still makes a healthy amount of revenue from DVD rentals-almost $300 million in 2019 according to a recent SEC filing-though that’s dwarfed by the $20 billion it made from streaming subscribers over the same period. None of the people we spoke to knew anyone else who was still getting DVDs by mail, and subscriber numbers to the service are falling at a rate of half a million a year. Of all the huge numbers marking out Netflix’s rapid growth, perhaps this is the most surprising: There are still more than 2 million people in the United States getting Netflix DVDs by post. For most of us, the idea of deciding you want to watch a film, and then waiting for a rental copy to be physically mailed to you seems almost comically quaint. In January 2007, Netflix announced the launch of its streaming service-which quickly ballooned into a tech giant, with billions of dollars to spend on producing its own original content and 167 million subscribers across 190 countries.īut Eric, now aged 41, kept on getting DVDs and Blu-Rays by mail-sometimes he watched them and sent them back quickly, other times they sat unopened for months. But the company’s business model was already starting to change. This story originally appeared on WIRED UK.īy 2007, Netflix delivered its billionth DVD-a copy of Babel, dispatched to a customer in Texas from one of its 42 national distribution centers across America, which served 6.3 million subscribers.