Sure but buying a DVD isn't great either as it has a real destroying the earth cost for something that can be delivered to me using a negligible amount of energy digitally. I don't think there's a way of getting movies/tv shows reasonably in 2022, though I don't mind paying for, and do pay for subscription services such as Netflix, I just pirate the content anyway because it's a much better user experience.

At least it's still mostly possible to buy a set of *.flac files when you want some music.

> Sure but buying a DVD isn't great either as it has a real destroying the earth cost for something that can be delivered to me using a negligible amount of energy digitally. I

Then buy the streaming version. If it is available by DVD, then you can probably find it available to purchase digitally.

Really? Just as a litmus test, the last movie I pirated was a 10bit 4k rip of "The Matrix" which comes in at about 40gigs. This is about the level of quality I'm looking for in a file I buy, sorry if I was misleading w/ my mention of DVD. Practically speaking this is similar to having a *.flac of a song, as it enables me to transcode to lower quality versions for use on different devices from a high quality master. Is this something I can pay for?

Yes, you can purchase or rent the physical copy.

Please enlighten me where I can buy a streaming movie that can be watch without login, transferred to another service or transferred to another of my devices.

Movies from Sony, Universal, Disney, WB can be watched through multiple services.

https://moviesanywhere.com

> Most content can be purchased outside of Netflix at some point, on DVD or another medium.

You cannot buy Netflix original movies on DVD or blu-ray. They do sell some of their series (although not all of them - mostly just the very popular entries).