Digital copies on iTunes are priced somewhere near "highway robbery". Because of the lack of retail-style transactions, there's no price competition on digital copies. What's funny, it's usually cheaper to buy the Blu-ray/DVD/digital copy combo packs... even if you just want the digital copy.
Recently I picked up a couple Blu-rays with digital copies for $3 at Fry's. Vudu had one of them on a huuuuuuuge sale this weekend, digital copy only, for $5. The iTunes price is $14.99. Again, I got that $15 iTunes price... for $3 as physical copy with a digital code. And if I wanted, I could sell the disc at a resale shop and get back a buck or two. Buying video on demand online right now makes no financial sense whatsoever.
> Buying video on demand online right now makes no financial sense whatsoever.
That's only if you place little or no value on convenience. I don't spend much money on video, so the occasional $10 or $20 purchase is bearable.
I don't want a physical copy and I certainly don't want to go to Fry's. For me, iTunes / Google Play / Amazon Video all make more sense.
I've actually thought about cancelling cable and buying everything on demand because I think I would save some money. We're paying more than $1000 / year for TV. That would pay for a lot of TV at $2-$3 per episode. We've never made the jump though because of live sports and the stupid blackout rules.
> That's only if you place little or no value on convenience.
I place a fair amount of value on convenience, but I weight it differently than you do. Not having to worry about my player's internet connection is a big plus. Not caring where I bought the video from is also nice. I like that it's a fire-and-forget operation to convert the video into a format that works on virtually every piece of video-oriented electronics that I own.
Bonuses: I get to choose which version of a particular video that I buy (there are often several available), often receive it in multiple formats, can loan it to a friend, and local media tends to have fewer compression artifacts than streamed media.
Of course, all this only applies to things that I care enough to buy separately. I've got Netflix and Amazon. I've got a few hundred games through a combination of half a dozen services, and it's a pain figuring out which service I bought a particular game through, and all that. I'd rather go to my wallet of game DVDs and pull it out (and I do, for services like Humble Bundle and GOG, where I can download the games and put the installers on external media).
> I place a fair amount of value on convenience, but I weight it differently than you do.
That really is the key. I get it that all those things you list go into the choices you make. I value similar things, but differently so my choices are different. There's no right or wrong.
I'd have to be pretty loaded to want to spend 500% the price for minor convenience. ;) Similar major discounts are available via Amazon Prime as well, if you can wait two days for it to arrive.
I just ordered a Blu-Ray copy of Sing off Amazon yesterday, it's $20 on iTunes and $15 on Amazon for the Blu-Ray/DVD/Digital product. Considering I can keep a high-quality archival copy of the movie in a box and still get a code I can plop into iTunes, though I'll just rip the disc into my Plex library anyway, it's a much better deal.
My list of things I want to watch is longer than I'll ever have time for. Because I'm not rewatching movies, building up a library doesn't make a whole lot of sense for me nor do I want more boxes and discs to be the caretaker of. If I can rent or buy a stream, I'm happy. I don't do it all that often, so the cost isn't really a factor.
Totally reasonable, there's a reason why Redbox/Netflix/iTunes/Amazon/Sony/etc. all offer rentals and I've used them all at one point. If you can't ever see yourself re-watching a movie or only doing so infrequently rentals can make a lot of sense.
I'm a bit of a digital packrat who likes to collect media, but a large chunk of my present movie collection is stuff for my daughter who wants to rewatch the same movie constantly so purchasing content to keep is the way I go 99% of the time.
