[kolbe]

Blockbuster is irrelevant. They had to pay for real estate and retail employees, and had a much better selection. Streaming is a completely different business.

Netflix disks are a better comp. They cost the same as streaming does and while the selection is far better, the limited capacity is far worse for most people.

The real competition will probably end up being piracy, eventually. Netflix streaming is getting worse content. And if this decline continues, piracy will become much more favorable.

[inciampati]

I am a habitual pirate. I'm the kind who wants to pirate media because I believe that the media system is a lifesucking waste exploiting the rest of society. If I can drop their profits then maybe they will spend more on the cheap stuff (good writing and ideas) and less on the eyecandy and marketing. At best, they fade out of existence and we go back to swapping stories orally.

So at some point I decided that a subscription service with almost everything I was interested in would socialize things appropriately and reduce the transaction costs so that piracy and this anarchic tendency wouldn't be worthwhile. After a few years of using the service, I feel that it is only a moderate convenience. In the end my watching habits haven't changed. I am saving some time downloading random things from random horrible websites. But the selection is horrific. There is no way to actively decide to watch something. There are just a handful of options. There are no classics. It's worse than the selection on an international flight. And it's getting expensive.