But look at the price point. Originally $1.99 per episode to just rent it. Even $0.99 sounds a lot to me.

That's almost $50 for an entire series. What's the average amount of time someone would spend watching TV series per night? An episode of this, an episode of that, 3 or 4 times a week. Suddenly you're spending vastly more than cable.

That's more than a modern box set will cost you, e.g. Boardwalk Empire, just released is selling for $40 on Amazon.

Yet they spent $5million per episode, that's a lot of views to just break even, plus the server hosting costs and vendor marketplace cut to make.

The whole thing is overly complex, per item rental is too complicated, a fractured marketplace makes subscriptions poor, the time drip model that studios and channels used to use is dying, but they won't let it go.

I think it'll be 5 to 10 years before we finally see a decent resolution to this where actually paying is less hassle than piracy.

Yes, I do remember when they shuttered TV show rentals. The only reason they gave is that users preferred to buy TV shows. I find that hard to believe although I could be wrong. Charging people $1.99/$2.99 to purchase an episode of a show means $20-$30 for a season (sometimes more). It makes more sense to just pay for cable at those prices, which I refuse to do.