[EthanHeilman]

Netflix does under certain circumstances does provide a better experience than piracy.

* You don't have to wait 5 minutes to watch the show, it starts playing instantly.

* You don't have to worry about storage or codecs.

* If you don't know what to watch, netflix can help with that.

* If you are on a train or bus, generally you can get netflix and watch movies on your phone. I do this quite regularly.

This isn't to say there aren't serious advantages to piracy or legal downloading (it doesn't work on linux), there are. Steaming can be a disaster if the internet is having a bad hair day. It depends on circumstance and goals. I invested in netflix the day I saw someone unwilling to wait for a show to download and use netflix instead.

Steam combines the best of both worlds. I just wish they would add a DRM free at 365 days from launch feature + price drops to 5 dollars.

[calinet6]

Yep, I agree. Plex integrates with Netflix nicely and provides many options. When I can go through Netflix, I definitely do—but it is not providing instant new releases when they air.

And their interface is ugly and near unusable. It's a testament to the value of the service that people love it despite its disorganized interface, just because they can easily watch about 30% of the content they really want.

[EthanHeilman]

Oh neat, I did not know about plex.