Netflix's DVD rental service, after 25 years, is shutting down on September 29th this year. Since 1998, more than 40 million customers have rented over 5.2 billion DVD movies from Netflix. With the end of Netflix's legacy by-mail DVD/Blu-ray Disc movies rental service, where to rent DVDs? For people who still love renting DVD movies are seeking for alternatives to Netflix for DVD rental, don't worry. There are many other options offering an equivalent DVD rental services for former Netflix DVD users.
Redbox is one of the largest DVD rental companies in the United States. It's a cheap and convenient Netflix DVD rental alternative by installing kiosks (it now has about 38,000) in retail stores and renting DVDs out at a low-price point. Users can rent DVDs from a local Redbox kiosk where you live. Compared to Netflix's by-mail DVD rental, the low-cost and convenience of renting from Red Box is unmatched, though it doesn't provide many movie choices in a kiosks.
3D-BlurayRental.com is specialized in offering 3D & 4K Blu-ray DVDs and games for rental. This site can be the best alternative to Netflix DVD rental if you have some DVD titles in your Netflix DVD queue that cannot be found elsewhere. It has some hard-to-find titles and you can even email them to help you find a movie. You can rent a DVD from the service via two ways: pay per DVD rental for $4.99 to $8.99, and return the DVD within 7 days (an extra $2 per day will be charged after 7 days), or subscribe a plan starting at $8.99 a month with no due dates and no late fees!
GameFly is well-known for providing games for PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo, Wii, and more, however, there is a less-known DVD-by-mail rental service like Netflix. You can find a huge number of new and old titles available in DVD, Blu-Ray and 4K UHD formats. It's also a place where you can rent DVDs that are newly released movies and you can't stream on Netflix. You can choose from different plans and there are one-month trials for its Blu-ray and DVD or 4K Elite plans, and discounts are available in other plans for the first 3 months.
Horrorpack is a good alternative to Netflix for DVD rental where you can rent horror DVD movies. Every month, 4 horror movies in DVD or Blu-ray formats will be shipped to customers in mystery boxes. You can't request a specific movie title, instead, the site will pick four best titles for you. The movies in the boxes can be a hit or miss but overall it's pretty good value considering you're getting 4 brand new, shrink-wrapped movies. The DVD plan starts at $24.99/month while the upgraded Blu-ray option will cost you a bit more at $29.99.
Cafe DVD is another DVD rental service just like Netflix. It's based in San Francisco and is able to send DVDs to users anywhere in the United States. It offers a massive selection of over 60,000 DVDs, focused on high-quality movies that Netflix doesn't carry. You can subscribe for $9.99 to $27.99 a month and 2 or 4 movies added in your Movie Queue will be shipped to you. If you don't want to become a subscriber, you can also pay $3 or $4 per DVD or Blu-ray rental (plus shipping). But note that pay per rental allows a maximum rental period of 8 days, and $3 per DVD per week late fee will be charged after that.
4KBLURAY4U is a good alternative to Netflix where you can rent Blu-ray discs. On the site, you can find 4K UHD movies in various genres and some newest 4K movies are available. If you can't find something you want, you can ask them to add it to their selection via a simple request. Compared to another UHD rental service 3D-BlurayRental, this services offers more competitive and lower price, with 4 discs rental priced for $16.99. The monthly price decreases considerably as you increase the amount of monthly disc rental.
Some users are asking where to rent DVDs near me. The public libraries are the answers. If you live in a big city, check if there is a public library. For example, Hoopla and Kanopy are offering movies for free rental via local library. In general, these libraries have a wide range of physical DVD or Blu-ray selection that you can brorrow. For example, Kanopy offers more than 30,000 films, including Hollywood classics, foreign films, indie flicks, shorts, and documentaries. In order to rent or borrow DVDs from the library, you usually only need a library card. In addition, you may also stream movies via apps on iPhone or iPad, Android device, Fire TV, Roku, or Apple TV.
In light of Netflix DVD closing, somes users are seeking for other options that provide similar DVD rental service like Netflix, while there are also users who have a large DVD collection are considering building their own alternative to Netflix. But those users are worrying their DVDs may get lost or damaged, especially when the disc is no longer available to buy. Instead of buying a second copy of a DVD, you can choose to make a digital copy of your DVD before you lend a DVD out.
Matthew Palmer is a seasoned content creator with over 10 years of experience in Windows at large. He has been specialized in almost any technology with Windows OS and written thousands of new articles, covering everything from in-depth features of new laptops, latest GPU/CPU PC hardware, games, to software related. While digging into new techs, he continues enjoying painting and comics.
It was on this date in 1956 that the VCR was invented. Can you imagine a world without being able to watch movies at home? I can remember when you would go to the video store and rent a top loading VHS machine and spend a whole weekend watching movies. It was amazing that you could watch a real movie at home. The technology blew us away and so did the price of movies. They used to cost $60-70 apiece because they were only selling them to video stores and not the general public.
We have come a long way from those days. You can now pop in a Blu Ray or stream a movie on Netflix. I am still a dinosaur and have a DVD/VHS combo player. I am not a technology geek and will get to Blu Ray one day but not yet and I thought streaming was another term for fishing or going number one. I am out of the loop. How about you? How do you watch movies at home?
It was on this date in 1956 that the VCR was invented. Can you imagine a world without being able to watch movies at home? I can remember when you would go to the video store and rent a top loading VHS machine\nRead More
About 1 million of the subscribers are requesting Blu-ray discs instead of standard DVDs, and Blu-ray discs cost about 30% more. That means Netflix's profit margins are being squeezed as it expands its high-definition inventory.
Renters who pay $14 per month for Netflix's two-DVD package will have to fork over another $3 if they want Blu-ray discs. Under another popular plan that costs $17 per month for three DVDs, customers who prefer Blu-ray discs will have to pay an additional $4. Subscribers who have more expensive rental plans will pay even more for the Blu-ray luxury.
All monthly fees will remain the same for customers who exclusively rent standard DVDs. Netflix is trying to make it easy for people to avoid the new surcharges by disabling the Blu-ray preference in their rental accounts.
The higher Blu-ray fees come at a time when Netflix's subscriber growth has been accelerating, partly because more households have been gravitating toward relatively cheap forms of home entertainment to save money.
Back in 2014, my movie Before I Wake was pirated and leaked prior to any domestic release, and that was devastating to the project. It actually made it harder to find distribution for the film. By the time we were able to get distribution in the US, the film had already been so exposed online that the best we could hope for was a Netflix release. Netflix stepped in and saved that movie, and for that I will always be grateful to them.
While companies like Netflix pride themselves on being disruptors, and have proven that they can affect great change in the industry, they sometimes fail to see the difference between disruption and damage. So much that they can find themselves, intentionally or not, doing harm to the concept of film preservation.
This has happened before as well - fans of Northern Exposure can get the show on DVD and blu-ray, but the music they heard when the series aired has been replaced due to the licensing issues. And the replacements - chosen for their low cost, not for creative reasons - are not improvements. What if the shows are just changed, and not by creatives, but by business affairs executives?
All to say that physical media is critically important. Having redundancy in the marketplace is critically important. The more platforms a piece of work is available on, the more likely it is to survive and grow its audience.
Interestingly, Randolph is taking this very advice to heart and eliminating an aging, likely not profitable, segment of the business to focus more on the one that will yield the greatest opportunities going forward. There are still DVD and Blu-ray holdouts, but the writing is on the wall. Millennials are now 27-42 years old. The DVD generation is done.
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