Netflix CEO Ted Sarandos has announced on his business blog that the company will shut down its original DVD movie mail-in service. The company thus closes one of the most successful digitization chapters in history, going from being a kind of video store at home to one of the largest streaming platforms in the world.

Netflix was born in 1998 as the postal mail alternative to movie and series rental establishments such as Blockbuster, Hollywood Video and Family Video. Instead of having to physically go to a store, the company offered home delivery of DVD discs. This was the business that laid the foundation for its innovative streaming video platform, a pioneer worldwide.

Almost 25 years and 5.2 billion shipments later, Netflix will ship its latest DVD on September 29. The absolute preponderance of streaming has made this division of the company totally dispensable and the company has not hesitated to eliminate it permanently.

In fact, Netflix’s revenue from the DVD business fell progressively in the last decade to the point that last year it barely billed 146 million dollars, 20% less than in 2021, which represented only 0.5 % of your total income.

“Our goal has always been to offer the best service to our members, but as business slowed, it became more and more difficult. (…) To everyone who has ever added a DVD to their shopping cart or waited by the mailbox for a red envelope to arrive: Thank you,” Sarandos explained on his blog.

The company has also announced an improvement in its service plan that includes advertising. The American company has announced that users subscribed to this plan will be able to start watching content in 1080p resolution.

In addition, this cheaper plan will also begin to have the possibility of making two simultaneous transmissions compatible within the same address. These new advantages are already available for users in Canada and Spain, while in many other countries they will arrive at the end of the month.

“We believe that these improvements will make our offer even more attractive to a broader set of consumers and will further strengthen the commitment of subscribers to the ad-supported plan,” the platform said in a letter to its investors.

In the same letter, the company has also announced that, after testing it in a number of countries including Spain, Netflix will begin to pursue shared accounts in the United States as well.

This new policy will begin to be officially applied in the second quarter of the year, that is, from the end of June. However, the company has not yet made public the amount that will have to be paid for account sharing.

As is the case in many other countries around the world, Netflix subscribers who share their passwords with people outside their household will have to pay for each sub-account. In addition, only members with Standard or Premium plans will be able to add additional members, with a limit of two per account.

Otherwise, users living outside the home of the paying member will be banned from the platform and required to open their own accounts with the option to transfer their profiles.

Despite all these changes, Netflix is ​​holding up financially. Although it is true that the company registered a profit of 1,189 million euros in the first quarter, which represents a decrease of 18% over the same period in 2022, the number of subscribers grew by 1.75 million, according to the data revealed. this Tuesday at the close of the market.