Looking Back 2005: After the Gold Rush
May 14, 2025
Twenty years ago, the home entertainment industry was coming to terms with reality. By mid-summer it was clear that after eight years of dramatic growth, DVD was losing steam. The industry was in its longest box office slump in more than two decades, and weak DVD sales of Shrek 2 pushed DreamWorks Animation into the red — and the home entertainment business into a tailspin. Meanwhile, initial optimism over a next-generation successor disc soured with the realization that a format war seemed unavoidable. On the disc rental front, Netflix stock soared when Walmart shuttered its rival online disc-rental business and said it would direct customers to Netflix, which by the end of the year had nearly 4 million subscribers. Also in 2005, Apple launched the video iPod and three ex-PayPal employees started a streaming video service called YouTube.
