I always have thought that a surfeit of choice would have driven prices down, but maybe my movin' picture watching needs are different than most consumers (basically 100% amateur youtube at this point).

I think that one of the great ironies of on-demand media is just how much stuff is locked up by rights holders and is unavailable. The Disneys and Netflixes of the world make remarkably small catalogs available. You should see some of the libraries that tv stations have sitting on the shelf.

Maybe it's just that a serious change in format and/or delivery always loses 90% of the previous material. It's funny how few LPs made it to CD.