An article about that very topic made the rounds on HN about a month ago. It was interesting. Basically, it argued that a lot of classic and niche movies will r

An article about that very topic made the rounds on HN about a month ago. It was interesting. Basically, it argued that a lot of classic and niche movies will reach the verge of de facto extinction once the DVD business finally dies. Netflix's streaming selection is indeed quite thin, especially on genre movies and classic titles. Same thing with the selection on most streaming services, and even on a la carte digital download services like iTunes. Netflix's DVD business has basically reached its point of exponential decline, and the only ones holding out seem to be the film buffs and aficionados. Even old folks are switching to streaming now. It's an interesting time to be a film lover, and by "interesting," I mean it in the sense of that curse about living in interesting times. My guess as to what happens next: we'll see the increasing breakout of streaming providers by genre or interest. Some genres will have big enough audiences to bear out the cost and logistics of running a business around them (for example, anime and Crunchyroll). Other genres might not be as lucky. And then there's the black hole: titles only available on DVD, or even VHS, because the companies who made them went under. In a lot of these cases, nobody bothers acquiring the rights and remastering the films, because from a business standpoint, the payoff just isn't there.