This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.

At the end of this month, after more than two decades, Netflix is phasing out its DVD rental business.

Yes, it's DVD business. For a casual

movie fan, this seems like just an inevitable step toward the ubiquity of streaming.

But keep this in mind. Streamers like HBO Max and Disney Plus drop titles from their platforms

by the dozen all the time, and they don't give you a lot of explanation or warning.

And so for real movie fans, that's not good.

And they're taking the Netflix news hard.

Hi, we're here for Richard Brody.

Our producer, Adam Howard, went the other day to commiserate with the New Yorker's Richard Brody. Okay, one second. Our producer, Adam Howard, went the other day to commiserate with the New Yorker's Richard Brody. Hey, Richard. Thank you so much for letting us invade your home. Oh, please. Come on, you. Welcome, you are welcome. Thank you. It's good to see you. Richard Brody writes our column, the front row, and as an obsessive cinephile, his apartment and his desk at work, I can attest, are stacked to the ceiling with DVDs.

So, as I'm sure you know, Netflix has decided to discontinue their disc rental service.

I think for a lot of people, this news might be greeted with a shrug. But I imagine for someone like yourself who's a film critic and a film enthusiast,

you might greet this news with a little bit more concern. Well, Netflix's discontinuation of their

DVD rentals is indicative of the overall demise of physical media.

Physical media is what protects us from being at the complete mercy of streaming services for our movies and our music.

It's like having a library at home.

And when it comes to physical media, is there an ideal format?

I mean, some folks back in the day used to have laser discs.

I was pretty excited when VHS came in because it didn't just mean rentals.

In fact, VHSs were hardly ever meant for purchase, except for the wonderful knockoffs you'd find at convenience stores.

That's how my, after the first VHS I ever bought was Orson Wells of the trial, a complete and total bootleg. It cost me $2 and the film wasn't really available in other forms. Where would you have found Orson Wells as the trial? Oh, Dwayne Reed, CVS. That was that a Dwayne Reed? Yeah. Yeah. So you think it's fair to say that getting a DVD player or a VHS player is still like a

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