To put that in context, it's about $18 for a movie ticket where I live and $30 if you buy popcorn and a drink. But yeah, it still seems like a lot to pay for a few-year-old movie that you'll only ever watch once.

With an AMC subscription I can watch three movies per week (any movie, any theater, any seat) for $20 a month. Pretty decent deal as long as I don’t blow money on popcorns and drinks (that’s how they get you). I still definitely prefer watching movies on the big screen.

Well, that might work for you, but there's a lot of people that won't work for. I only watch about 3-5 movies a year. I also like popcorn with my movies, so I'm either watching at home, or paying up the wazoo.

Movies have dropped down in my perceived value considering within a year or two you can get a 60+ hour AAA video game for ~$15

And to put that in context, the closest theater to me generally has month or two old movies and charges $2-6. And I don't want popcorn anyway.

I'm gonna go out on a limb and say people where you live probably torrent less than people where I live. :P

It's in the middle of the US. It's more about the difference between a brand new movie and one that isn't.

Cinema is still pretty expensive. If I go to a pub to hang out with friends, I spend under $10/hour and get beer for the money.

One beer. :-/

I might drink 8 pints in a night hanging out with friends, spread out over about 6 hours. The beers I drink in pubs cost on average 6 Euro. That works out as 8 euro/hour, which is about US$8.84 and is 1 and 1/3 pints an hour. If I drink one more, for an average of 1.5 an hour, then it works out as US$9.94, still under $10/hour on average spread over about 6 hours.

I'm more happy to pay for the experience of the cinema though. Even though the film itself is only 2 hours you've got the travel and before/after events to make it more fulfilling.

>If films were like $1-$3 for a high resolution download I think they'd sell like wildfire. I'd definitely pay for the convenience.

I really doubt that would be the case. It would be way more likely that movies would be stuffed with ads and we'd be crying about the death of "real cinema", like we do today with journalism.

$1-$3 doesn't even seem sustainable.

Movies pay for themselves within the first few weeks/months in cinemas. I’m sure they would.

DVDs and Blu Rays are already packed with ads (Trailers etc) at full price.

The amount of people paying for them compared to getting them from other means would be higher too.

An increasing number of people don't have the infrastructure to save (large) files. They don't have PCs, only phones or tablets.

Yes that's probably it. As a techie I'd probably even be fine with buying a bluray and ripping it but I don't even know if their copy protection has been defeated for good or whether it's a cat and mouse game like with modern console piracy. So I watched exactly one movie at home this year on a laptop with a friends Netflix account. A DRM free download service would have made that maybe two or three.

That's essentially what a rental is. You're stuck with having to stream it, but most people don't care or even know about quality differences from that.

But if you're buying the disc it's not just $20 for 2 hours of entertainment. I bought Spiderverse on 4k and have watched it at least 5 times since buying, sometimes solo, sometimes with friends.

That's if you're the type to watch movies over and over again. There's only a few movies that I'd ever bother to re-watch.

Then there's no need to buy and renting is perfect for you is my point. It's typically 2 to 4 dollars. You can rent from iTunes, Amazon, YouTube, etc and get the movie usually for 48 hours.

Perhaps I really enjoyed the movie though and I’d like to watch it again in a few months time. Do I pay to rent it again or pay $20 for a permanent download?

Exactly. I spent $20 on a video game that so far I have got 160 hours of entertainment out of. I can afford $20 but that doesn't mean I think it's worth it.