Estimates are that Game of Thrones costs $6 million per episode http://www.contactmusic.com/news/game-of-thrones-costs-6-mil... and Netlix's House of Cards is around $4 million per episode. That puts things at the same order of magnitude. Here is a good article about the economics behind it for Netflix and HBO: http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/02/economics-...

I'm hoping the idea of exclusives goes away - as long as the producer gets paid, who cares how the actual video was delivered (cable, iTunes, Amazon, Netflix, Vudu, DVD etc). Unfortunately in the battle for market share it is worth some of those video deliverers to pay more to lock out competitors, but it doesn't benefit the consumers.