Hacker News Reader

Comment by commandlinefan | Hacker News Reader

> pay a fair price based on usage

I think you're the only one who wants that, though. They've tried that again and again and nobody uses it.

Though I can't quite put my finger on why, psychologically, I'm so less willing to fork over $3.99 to Amazon to watch a movie when I was perfectly happy to fork over that same $3.99 to Blockbuster for a physical block of plastic that I had to bring back in the same state they gave it to me.

View on HN

I had the same thought and did put a finger on it. It's because we don't trust Amazon or any of the other media companies for "buying" content online - we don't trust that the purchase is really permanent, eventually the company will go away or discontinue that service or lose the rights to that content or whatever. Since we don't trust them for buying, we don't trust them for renting either, even if we'd expect the rental transaction to be over in a day or two.

The problem with the micropayments model is that we almost never see it. I don't see $3.99 as a micropayment.

Rent for 4€, buy digital for 7€ or buy a hard copy for 8-10€. The decision is obvious.

While physical media feels more valuable because you can hold it, share it with people etc, I'd suggest you didn't pay $3.99 for the video at Blockbuster, you paid for the event of going to the store, browsing the titles, maybe discussing with your friends/family what you want to see, grab some popcorn, there's trailers on the TVs. It feels a lot more special than just scrolling through Netflix

And it’s not nostalgia. You can go to the blockbuster in bend Oregon that still exists and see that it’s simply fun to walk around and see the movies. It’s just that in the back of your mind you know you can stream everything you find from somewhere.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com