Over here, contracts with telecom giants like Bell are keeping some media (e.g. HBO content) away from stand-alone streaming. They have their own pet streaming services that require a cable subscription. Possibly factoring among the reasons GoT and the like had been so rabidly pirated.

When not everything is available, online rental is now a more viable option than it once was. I wonder why it's only the tech giants like MS who offer this. Why isn't Netflix also allowing digital rentals? I'd rather not pay MS, Apple or Google to see a movie over 50 years old.

edit: according to this https://blog.playstation.com/2021/03/02/playstation-store-to... even Sony stopped (or will stop) offering digital tv/movie purchases and rentals owing to the popularity of streaming. From memory, these were expensive. I guess there's a costly overhead to the service.