Netflix DVD will end

Last month, Netflix sent me an email saying they are ending their DVD-by-mail service at this coming September. I'm very sad about that. First, there's the nostalgia -- Netlix was a big deal when it started back in 1998. Back then, Blockbuster set the standard for movie rentals, and it worked like this:

1. Drive to Blockbuster (or any other movie rental place)
2. Walk through the aisles and see what they have
3. Pick something out (with luck, it's that one movie you wanted)
4. Watch it, and if you got a VHS, rewind it
5. Return it the next day

With Netflix, you could use the internet to set up your queue, pick whatever movie you could think of, and take however long you wanted to watch it. True, you couldn't really act on impulse, but the availability of old or less-than-popular movies made Netflix a great service.

It was also a great service for me as an American expatriate. When I was deployed to Afghanistan, I could use Netflix to watch movies from back home. And as my children have grown up in Korea, Japan, and Germany, Netflix provided a link to American culture.

Through my family's "Mandatory Culture Night" events, my kids have learned about the U.S. space program by watching Apollo 11 and well as Apollo 13. They've also been able to see movies that I remember from when I was young, such as The Love Bug and The Rescuers.

None of these movies are so great that I could consider buying them, but neither are they guaranteed to be availabe through Netflix's streaming service. In that sense, the end of the DVD-by-mail service is a great loss. It's memory that I will have, and my kids, too, but it will end there.