Netflix has really good compression though. Torrenting takes hours, makes the internet unusable in the whole house, and the quality is much worse. Netflix just works, even if multiple people are using it. And it goes straight to the TV.
And with a bit of extra work (very little, really) you can have a ridiculously nice torrenting setup. I can just add a movie to my IMDb watchlist and it will be on my TV in 15 minutes. And 10GB+ h264 Blu-ray encodes are much better quality than Netflix streaming (I can't vouch for their 4k streams, but I reckon they're still much lower bitrate).
I'm uploading 2 torrents right now at almost a megabit and my internet is just fine.
When there are good seeders I can pull 8 down. Most movies and shows are done in minutes.
No noticeable degradation to browsing speed, when a large file finishes there can be a little slowdown, but that's a different thing.
Streaming allows for instant start and adaptive bandwidth. Downloading means you can play it in whatever way you want, watch just the scenes you like, etc.
Netflix has a great UI for simple watching or you can use a full featured player and tweak lots of settings.
Also there are plenty of ways to play anything on a TV (smart tv with usb drive, network share, chromecast, htpc software, dlna) and you can use settings in your torrent client to limit the download speed if necessary. Some clients even let you torrent the file sequentially so you can start playing/streaming it before it's all finished.
1. QOS on the router, set a lower priority for the ports torrents use 2. Set a bandwidth limit in your torrent client 3. Use a queue / batch system to have them download at 3AM or whatever.
Or, you can just get a seedbox or VPS with a decent connection close enough to you that you can stream off it. The torrent will be done near instantaneously, and you'll be able to stream in higher quality than Netflix. You can stream full 1080P MKVs at <20Mbps.
Use private trackers as they're much better seeded, as well as the more obvious benefits.
You may have results like this, but I would guess that you're in the minority.
For me personally, well seeded 6-8GB movie takes an hour at most, usually less. I can still play online games, watch other streams online, browse, etc. and with other people using the same internet connection in the house doing the same things, and not have any noticeable slowdown. Full 1080p with AAC or DTS audio seems like higher quality to me than what Netflix provides.
The only upside Netflix has is the instant streaming, but if you're patient and can wait a bit for some downloads, or maybe run them at night or while at work, then this is a non-issue. Also you can just connect a TV to your computer.
Expect more of that in the future.