Lovefilm By Post to end in the UK, as Amazon goes streaming only

Alan Martin August 14, 2017

UK users of Lovefilm By Post – the service bought by Amazon back in 2011 – will no longer be able to rent DVDs and Blu-rays from 31 October, according to an email that’s gone out to subscribers.

Lovefilm By Post to end in the UK, as Amazon goes streaming only

“We have very much enjoyed delivering the Lovefilm By Post Service to you,” begins the email. “However, over the last few years we’ve seen a decreasing demand for DVD and Blu-ray rental as customers increasingly move to streaming.”

“Due to this, we will be closing the Lovefilm By Post service on 31st October 2017.” The company adds that until this point, rentals will go on as before, and there will be no more bills after 30 September 2017.

With the streaming part of Lovefilm long since being absorbed into Amazon Instant Video, this marks the end of one of the early trailblazers in online rentals. It was services such as Lovefilm that put video rental shops on life support machines before streaming killed them off completely. Now it appears streaming has done the same to postal rentals. “We are committed to finding alternative roles for all Lovefilm employees within Amazon,” an Amazon spokesperson told Alphr.

Twitter is currently very quietly in mourning for this – and even though the majority have switched to streaming via Netflix, Amazon or Now TV, there are very good reasons to stick to physical copies of films and TV series. The limitations of rural broadband could be one – or capped internet connections, that streamed video eats through. Then of course there’s the issue of library size: for all the improvements of streaming, there are still gaps – especially in terms of older contents. Finally there’s the issue of subtitles and closed captioning – something where streaming video has some catching up to do.

For now, if you’ve still got an account, you have 78 days to work through your backlog. Best get watching.

We have reached out to Amazon for further comment on this, and will update the piece when we receive a response.

Image: David Carrington used under Creative Commons