I suspect more people watch specific films rather than just have them on as background anything-but-the-silence-of-my-brain fillers. If that's an accurate suspicion then the Lionsgate approach isn't so odd.
In which case you're an outlier and frankly entirely uninteresting as a customer to all these companies from a commercial poverty anyway.
Netflix streaming has a poor selection of movies. Netflix dvd in mail is great but there are days of delay in mailing them back and forth.
Netflix is like an all you can eat buffet and this lionsgate is like a streak house. You wouldn't tell the steakhouse that thier food is overpriced because the golden coral sells all you eat for 7.99.
It think in practice it will. I don't think that difference in type VoD vs streaming library is as well defined in most people's minds as it is in yours. Same for attaching (much) more value to the one per movie as you do.
You're not wrong about the steak thing, but cheap price plus "unlimited" goes very far in practice I think. And in fact has judging by Netflix performance
EDIT: Just browsed through my watchlist on Instant Video, and most of the titles on it are available for rental at GBP 3.49 or 4.49, but quite a few are not available to rent at all, and have purchase prices ranging from around 5 to 15 pounds. I'm going to assume that Amazon knows what pricing works for them, at least in aggregate.
It's good for code, but you don't notice a lot of the detail; it's a different experience.
I wanted to watch a BBC drama the other night and was offered the choice between paying to 'rent' it from Xbox, or watch it on iPlayer for free.
Assuming I do want to watch the movie, by the time I've found it, found that it's available on x cloud platform and will cost me y to subscribe / buy / rent - odds are that foo discovery mechanism has surfaced something I'd be happy to watch on something that I already subscribe to.
What I was trying to communicate that I am much more choosey about the movies that I watch than the music I listen to. I think this is because the enjoyment I get out of an activity that involves music isn't completely defined by the music. If the music isn't good, the activity can still be very fun. If the movie isn't good, it's very unlikely that I will get any enjoyment out of watching it.