There's no denying that we are in the streaming era. Thousands of TV shows and movies are available at the push of a button on a multitude of platforms like Prime Video, Hulu, Disney Plus, Paramount Plus, Peacock, HBO Max (soon to be Max) and Netflix. Streaming has become so popular that Netflix has shifted its business model around it, announcing that it is ending its shipment of Netflix DVDs as of September 29.
"So what," many people might be saying, having already unsubscribed from that service and happily enjoying just scrolling through Netflix's streaming offerings of original series as well as recent and classic movies and TV shows. It's been estimated that to watch everything that Netflix streams would take more than four years, so there's plenty to choose from, right?
Sure, but just what is available for streaming is not at all in your control. How many people were frustrated when The Office moved from Netflix to Peacock, forcing you to add another streaming service or switch to keep watching? Or how about the stir when HBO Max removed a load of TV shows and movies that were only playing on its service because they wanted a tax write off. When you subscribe to a streaming service, you have access to all of its content, but you do not own any of it. It can be taken away in an instant, moved to another platform or just gone entirely from the internet.
This is why, as Netflix says goodbye to its DVD era, we as TV and movie lovers should be rallying around DVDs and all that they can offer us.
There are a number of things that DVDs provide us that streamers don't, but the two big ones are choice and control. Netflix may have four years worth of content, but what's available is not up to you. Over the years, the streamer's offering has been shrinking as other streaming services pop up and take back the movies and TV shows that their parent company is associated with for their own platform. Before 2019, many of the MCU movies were available to stream on Netflix, but now just about all of them are only streaming on Disney Plus.
Even if you do like the idea of buying a movie but would rather do so through digital platforms like Prime Video, you don't technically own it. Though unlikely, Disney could decide that it doesn't want a third-party playing MCU movies and pull the rights. That could mean even if you bought Avengers: Endgame, Disney could simply snap their fingers and it would be dusted, gone from your digital library.
If you want the peace of mind of being able to watch Avengers: Endgame or any other title whenever you want, a DVD is really your only option to be able to do so.
Of course, Disney isn't likely to get that greedy and pull digital copies of its other popular movies. But what about older and more obscure movies? A couple of years ago I watched a beautiful movie from 1937 from legendary director Leo McCarey called Make Way for Tomorrow through Netflix's DVD subscription. If Netflix's DVD service stopped today but I wanted to watch Make Way for Tomorrow online, I couldn't, it's not available anywhere. Of course that is an extreme example of a movie that is nearly 90 years old, but some on Twitter have shared other examples of more recent movies with well known names that aren’t anywhere online.
For example, recently rented "Without a Clue" from 1988 starring Ben Kingsley and Michael Caine. Not streaming anywhere, probably too obscure, no interest. Netflix DVD was the only way to get it (legally, other than just buying it). Many such examples. pic.twitter.com/OBREtKqupiApril 18, 2023
There are other elements of DVDs that you just don't get with streaming titles, like commentary, deleted scenes and other special features that can truly add to your enjoyment of a movie. And while we've been using the base term of DVD for this article, physical copies of movies have been keeping up with the advancements of picture revolution with Blu-ray and 4K copies ensuring that the picture quality is as good as they can be. Related, you know what else happens when you have a DVD of something? No buffering or drops in video quality, unless you're playing frisbee with the disc and getting it all scratched up.
I'm not advocating for DVDs to become the dominant form of watching once again, but DVDs and streaming can and should co-exist. Streaming services can be a great place to discover movies and TV shows that you may not have known about before, but if it becomes something that you truly love, as we've laid out, owning a physical DVD of it may be the best way to ensure that you can always watch it.
The nixing of Netflix DVDs marks the end of an era, but it can and should serve as a reminder that DVDs are not some ancient relic that has no purpose today. Instead, it is a key resource in giving entertainment lovers control over what we watch and when we watch it. Long live DVDs.
