How is Netflix able to get rights to send physical media, but not stream? It seems to me that literally the only real difference is physical media means there is a limit on number of concurrent viewers.
From a copyright perspective, that's a fundamental difference from streaming.
That being said, physical media has far superior audio and video quality. A Bluray disc vs streaming 1080p (especially a Netflix stream) is a world of difference. Streaming media is usually bit-starved to near death. If you care about quality (and you very well may not), it's the only way to fly.
If you don't mind the subpar video and audio quality, then I can understand why people use the streaming service. It's just not for me, though. I have a 49" 4k TV and a Bluray player that upscales for a reason. I don't want that swill they serve up over ethernet, lol.
An unfortunate situation.
The value Netflix provides is primarily convenience. There are other ways to watch movies and TV shows, the reason to use Netflix is that it's more convenient than the alternatives.
Having to deal with physical media (and wait for them to be delivered) is less convenient than other alternatives to Netflix. Therefore, it's a flaw of Netflix.
I'd much rather put up with the minimal hassle and a bit of a wait to get a great selection of DVDs.
The "hassle" amounts to me opening up an envelope, putting the DVD in to my DVD player, putting it back in to the envelope when I'm done and throwing it in to a mailbox on my way to work.
Sure, it's not as easy as hitting play in a streaming app, but not really a big deal, either.
Which was exactly my point. It's a flaw of Netflix that it's streaming collection isn't as good as it's DVD collection.
I don't plan for movie night days in advance. I'm not going to rent that shit in the mail. So after a few years of not touching my DVD player, I threw it out.
The content owners are the real ones losing out here. I'd pay $4 to stream any movie, there's just no service I'm aware of that offers them all digitally at that price.
I just recently started using VidAngel though, and I'm happy with it so far. They advertise being able to filter movies, but you can always just filter a single word if you don't want anything filtered. It's $1 for SD and $2 for HD. They have an interesting licensing model though so you sort of have to have a constant $18-$19 deposit with them.