The business was shrinking and shrinking, and I don't see any meaningful growth in that area. If you know that one of your business avenues is eventually going down do a level where it makes no money (or might even start losing money since warehouses, personnel, logistics, dealing with delinquent non-returns, etc. all cost money to run) - why would you maintain it?
If someone believes there is still value in it, they can try filling it, but the only other player I see in that market is Redbox (whose business model is kiosks rather than postage), and they probably don't need anything Netflix has to offer.
As much as I dislike the modern tech/business sector, I think this makes perfect sense, even though I have a lot of nostalgia for it, so many good memories from the DVDs I rented over a decade ago.
Was that the problem, though, or was it just that it wasn't as profitable as the streaming business? The last most of us knew, the DVD business was still profitable.
The real story is probably about big corporate agendas being set by the market, which demanded higher profits on everything of a hulking company than a tiny niche business could produce. That combined with a desire to not bleed IP by spinning the DVD business off to be its own success.
Anti-trust laws ought to keep these things from happening.
If someone believes there is still value in it, they can try filling it, but the only other player I see in that market is Redbox (whose business model is kiosks rather than postage), and they probably don't need anything Netflix has to offer.
As much as I dislike the modern tech/business sector, I think this makes perfect sense, even though I have a lot of nostalgia for it, so many good memories from the DVDs I rented over a decade ago.