[jmilloy]

The difference now is that, for 2 or 3 dollars, you can individually rent and stream most movies instantly. No need to pay a subscription that requires you to scroll through a small low-quality subset on a irritating interface.

[sib]

Speaking specifically of the US market (I don't know where you are), the list of available titles for transactional rental at any time is a tiny subset of all movies that exist on digital due to windowing (licensing) restrictions. By far, most movies are not available for rental.

[jfengel]

It's true. But most movies that people actually want to see, are.

I worked in a video store, back when there were such things, and can attest that the vast majority of people wanted the new thing and ignored the back catalog. It was my job to get them interested in the back catalog. I didn't do very well.

I joined Netflix because they had that back catalog available. But now that I'm old and grumpy, I've seen most of what I want to see in that back catalog, too. There's a ton of stuff in that category of "I'm sure it's great but I just don't want to work that hard". Also... most of that back catalog is crap, just under Sturgeon's Law.

Sadly, Netflix has figured that out, and gotten rid of most of its back catalog of DVDs. I hope the real film buffs have some other place to go get it.

[jmilloy]

That's fair. Maybe an order of magnitude difference between what's available on say Netflix streaming and what's available for individual rental, and maybe another order of magnitude for all movies? There sure are a lot of movies. I'm not sure where the Netflix DVD rental falls, especially if you account for movies that are technically available but with so few copies that it may take months to actually come to you.