How does lovefilm by post work

The service, which began as a pure DVD rental company in , has more than 1. Lovefilm is one of the most impressive new media businesses to have come out of the UK in the last ten years. Starting with a very simple idea - send DVDs in the post to people who watch them and then send them back - it has attracted 1. It is now transforming itself into a digital delivery service, following the example set by Netflix in the United States - and it will be better placed to do that as part of a giant business like Amazon.

But some in the UK tech scene will be disappointed that Lovefilm could not carry on growing as an independent business.

And they will ask the old question - why can't we in Britain grow our own world-beating technology businesses?

For a monthly fee, subscribers can receive movies and TV shows through the post or watch them over a broadband internet connection. Amazon has announced it will close its postal DVD rental service on 31 October this year. Lovefilm was founded in and acquired by Amazon in — at which point it had 1. Its streaming service was folded into Amazon Instant Video in , with the "Instant" dropped from the name the following year. A statement from Amazon said: "In the past years, a growing number of customers have made use of streaming services while the demand for renting DVD and Blu-ray discs has declined at the same time.

We are planning to offer every affected Lovefilm employee another fitting role at Amazon. There are conversations about this happening at the moment. It offered something no one else was at an affordable price: specificity. They struggle to cater for people with specific tastes, who are into Korean horror or screwball comedies from the s and 40s.

But Lovefilm did. This is how I discovered that Citizen Kane was gripping and crazily fresh, not some tedious old fossil you had to watch out of principle. Are all these films available from streaming? Lovefilm was around a tenner a month, for unlimited films, two discs at a time. LoveFilm arguably lived beyond its time, an analogue service at a time when the internet has developed an insatiable, dangerous appetite for data.

Read more: 42 of the best Amazon Prime series right now. Success in this industry is all about reducing friction. Blockbuster gave everyone access to a huge film collection on their high street. LoveFilm gave everyone access to Blockbuster through their letterbox. Netflix gave everyone access to LoveFilm through the air. In its heyday, the LoveFilm deal was genius. Pay money, get a steady trickle of DVDs and Blu-rays plonked through your letterbox each month.