It’s a good concept, but is it going to catch on?
[…] the question remains, will consumers care about not possessing the files? There are clear advantages in not doing so: you don’t need buckets of local storage, and you don’t have to fear losing your collection to burglars or housefires.
There are clear advantages the other way too, as all too many people have learned in recent years: you don’t have to rely on anyone else — who might change their minds and shut down their servers at any point if (for instance) they don’t feel that they’re making enough money on the service — to allow you to play your movies in the future. It’ll be quite a while before I’ll trust anything like this, for just that reason. Give me a DVD any day, I’ll convert it myself if I want to watch it on my iPod Touch.
I watched netflix a bit online using their streaming service on my Xbox 360 and my PC. It was OK since for some movies I don’t want to see them a lot of times anyway, I’d never purchase music that way though… They also offer a DVD-by-mail service too of course, which they’re famous for; so if I wanted to see a movie over and over again, I could always get a DVD.
I let my subscription expire though, I’m not a big movie buff.
I really prefer to have my own copies of DVDs, since I like to re-watch most movies.
Netflix’s basic service (well, they had an even more basic one for a few dollars less that sucked for instant viewing – 2 hr limit a month) had unlimited watching of the instant movies, you could watch it as many times as you want, and watch any new movie at the click of a mouse or game controller or iOS device screen. 🙂 Of course, if netflix goes belly-up, you can’t watch it instantly again. Such a level of convenience is unmatched unless you want to do things illegally.
If I wanted to watch a movie indefinitely and forever, I could always, with the same plan, rent the same or another DVD and keep it as long as I wanted, just needing to send it back to get another. (They had a multi-DVD rental plan too, but like I said, I’m not a movie fanatic.) So if I decided I loved a movie, it would be trivial to order the DVD.