Here's one disgruntled customer who doesn't miss Netflix at all. Redbox fills the void nicely and it's way cheaper for my viewing habits.
We love netflix at home. They're seriously starting to ramp up on TV series licenses and 80s and 90s hit movies now (where we as Gen-Xers go for our nostalgia trips).
And, I'm starting to see some AAA blockbusters show up from the recent past (<5 years ago). So, it's coming along nicely for our needs and definitely for the price. I've never understood how people who say "well, cable has bigger hits faster", but not only do you have to pay $50+ for digital HD cable, but >$10 on top for HBO/Cinemax/premiums, and pay to "rent" on-demand recent hit movies.
Now that is the ripoff.
Personally, I don't like Netflix's streaming video model, I much prefer that of Amazon's but I would definitely like to see the price decrease. Having a large library of movies (mostly older, some fairly recent), doesn't do me any good unless it has the movie I want to watch at that time. I don't watch all that many movies so when I do watch one I want it to choose from any movie to do so, not be limited to a subset of movies for which they were able to negotiate rights to stream them.
I think the "buffet" model of streaming content works for TV shows a lot better since they're shorter and most people are more willing to watch what they consider a "sub-optimal" choice of a show than a movie.
So that's 2 movies a month for roughly the same amount? With Netflix, I watch 2 movies a day. Have to agree that the offering is a little sparse, but it's a much better alternative than watching regular TV.
You watch too many movies :)
The thing you're talking about is quite comparable to the iTunes Store. Most, if not all, of the videos that are free with Prime Instant Videos can also be rented one at a time by people who aren't Amazon Prime members.
I also think paying for rentals one at a time makes more sense for watching movies.
$0.50 a viewing would be great, but I wouldn't take it over $10 a year for access to the same library.
Netflix works in all these places and works well.