[dotnet00]

It has been a decade since I owned a computer with a dvd drive and similarly long since I had to use a dvd at all, and I'm much more of a techie than the average person.

The simple fact is that most people by now don't even have the means to play dvds.

[rchaud]

You say you're more of a techie than the average person, so it follows that you have no use for a DVD drive. What about the millions of other people that have had a perfectly fine DVD player in their homes for several years?

It isn't just DVD players. I've never purchased a standalone player, it came built in on my Playstation. It's only in the most modern generation of consoles that you have a choice to buy a disc drive-less version.

[VBprogrammer]

The counter point to that is that DVDs look terrible on modern 60" TVs. You don't have to be a techie to have one of those. Even my 93 year old grandmother has one.

[rchaud]

Movies and TV shows before 2008 weren't commercially available in resolution above DVD quality, unless special efforts were made to upscale and re-release them.

[im_z]

"Upscale" is the wrong word here. The film is scanned at a higher resolution. If it was shot on tape then yes it has to be upscaled but almost no films were shot on tape.

[dotnet00]

By more of a techie, I mean to say that I am capable of buying an external reader and dealing with many more hurdles if needed to get something done (eg to read a dvd). So not having a built-in drive would've been less of a hurdle for me, if I had needed to read a dvd.

I have never been a TV console gamer (always been a handheld person), so I concede that point.

[rchaud]

I don't think the Netflix DVD customer base is on the go all that much. If anything I would guess they are the segment most likely to still have a cable TV subscription, and do all their media watching at home on a TV.

[im_z]

Being a "techie" is irrelevant. It is straightforward to get a disc player if someone wants it. You clearly don't want it. But if someone does, the lack of tech knowledge is barely a barrier. I would guess people that are less tech savvy are more likely to still use discs to be honest.

[dotnet00]

I was pointing to being a 'techie' because in my experience, with non-techies, it isn't that obvious to just buy a reader/player.

My parents for instance were surprised to learn that the reader didn't need to be built into the laptop and could be a separate usb thing. They just figured that they'd need to pay for a service to get the discs converted to files on a flash drive similar to how they had previously done for taped videos rather than thinking that they can just buy a reader.