I pay for cable and Netflix. I, ahem, “have access” to Amazon Prime and the quartet of premium cable movies channels (HBO/Starz/Cinemax/Showtime). There’s probably a Redbox on my porch fully loaded with copies of Trolls. Hulu’s library is garbage; nobody needs Hulu.
Yet the best content* service in my life is Netflix’s DVD-by-mail subscription service, which I’ve happily paid for each month since 2009 and will until they decide it’s no longer worth the postage servicing the six dozen people that still pay for it.
Six – Dozen and One.
Back in the day, DirecTV and a few other conglomerates were legally trying to stop Netflix from getting movies on release-Tuesday claiming that Netflix was hurting movie sales. They started a campaign “before netflix”
Luckily, streaming happened and everyone moved on and now it’s all about building this moat around your subscribers with original content. This is great for film geeks. Because everyone forgot about us. Now, you can get every Netflix movie in Blu-Ray, in HD legally the day after it comes out in stores / streaming and watch it uncompressed in full resolution in 5.1 surround sound at home without any stream buffering, net neutrality debates, region locking or paying for multiple streaming services.
Netflix puts that movie in the US Mail and it gets to you the next day. It will look better than renting it on iTunes and if you watch a movie a week, it’ll cost you less than renting on iTunes. Netflix DVD is amazing if you’re a movie buff. Just don’t tell Netflix that.