Redbox and its parent company, Chicken Soup for the Soul Entertainment, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in a Delaware court June 29 and claimed nearly $1 billion in debt. It’s a reorganization, not a dissolution, so the red refrigerator-sized kiosks often found outside drug stores and in-grocery vestibules are not (yet) going the way of the VHS. However, it’s already bad news for physical media.

The obituary for physical movie rental has long been a work in progress, dating back to Blockbuster Video filing for bankruptcy protection in 2010. Netflix, then primarily a DVD-by-mail service, destroyed the brick-and-mortar business. Within a few years, it was clear that streaming was Netflix’s future although it didn’t mail its last DVD until September 2023.

This year, we saw Best Buy stop carrying DVDs and Blu-rays while Disney pulled the plug on its own physical home-entertainment business, outsourcing production to Sony. Walmart, Target, and Barnes & Noble...