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> When they are available it is usually 5$ for a "rental". Is that a joke? I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical location and employees! B

> When they are available it is usually 5$ for a "rental". Is that a joke? I used to pay that at Blockbuster, and they had a physical location and employees! Blockbuster did not have to operate a huge IT infrastructure to bring you a movie. Also, with Blockbuster you had to make a trek to the store, hope the movie was there behind that huge wall of movie boxes, wait in line to check it out, take it home, rewind it (in VHS days), and then make a trip to return it. With streaming or cable video on demand, you push a button and get better picture quality than DVD or VHS too. Even the device is cheaper: I can get a Roku or similar for less than $100, while VHS and DVD players were more expensive than that for a long time. So in absolutely every respect it's a better product than Blockbuster, yet on an inflation-adjusted basis it is cheaper. But if you are really looking for cheap content with potential for being a constant consumer, Netflix still ships DVDs, and cable operators are always offering free on demand movies.

chucksmash 10y ago
> Blockbuster did not have to operate a huge IT infrastructure to bring you a movie. This gets it backwards, doesn't it? Surely the numbers for digital distribution are orders of magnitude better than those for physical distribution. Streaming Transmogrifiers 3 to 1000 people is much easier than ensuring at any given time 1000 people can walk into your last-mile distribution center and find a copy on the shelf.
Karunamon 10y ago
Blockbuster did not have to operate a huge IT infrastructure to bring you a movie. No; they just had to operate a huge logistics network to contract, (re)purchase, ship, store, catalog, track, and dispose of physical media. That's on top of the labor costs for 60,000+ employees over 8,000+ physical locations. Shifting bits around, even at Netflix scale, requires far fewer people and far less investment.

chucksmash 10y ago

> Blockbuster did not have to operate a huge IT infrastructure to bring you a movie. This gets it backwards, doesn't it? Surely the numbers for digital distribution are orders of magnitude better than those for physical distribution. Streaming Transmogrifiers 3 to 1000 people is much easier than ensuring at any given time 1000 people can walk into your last-mile distribution center and find a copy on the shelf.

Karunamon 10y ago

Blockbuster did not have to operate a huge IT infrastructure to bring you a movie. No; they just had to operate a huge logistics network to contract, (re)purchase, ship, store, catalog, track, and dispose of physical media. That's on top of the labor costs for 60,000+ employees over 8,000+ physical locations. Shifting bits around, even at Netflix scale, requires far fewer people and far less investment.