Opinion

For movie lovers, there’s a darker side to Netflix ending DVD rentals

Ty Burr is a film critic and the author of the movie recommendation newsletter Ty Burr’s Watch List.

When Netflix announced on Tuesday that it would be shuttering its DVD rental-by-mail operation — the business that gave the streaming video giant its start a quarter-century ago — the immediate response was to mourn the latest icon of pop culture to sadly but definitively outlive its time. Remember those little red envelopes? How intensely 2005! Okay, now toss them onto the dust heap with the BlackBerrys, iPod Nanos and “Guitar Hero.”