In a way, it's the same thing that happened to Firefly. When Fox started airing it, they aired the episodes in a random order, rather than in the designed order, so the audience had no idea what was going on. Thus, they didn't continue watching it after the first couple of episodes, and Fox decided to cancel it because its viewing numbers were low.
There are some pay-per-view services, such as Amazon, where you can either purchase a digital copy of something and watch it any time, or pay to rent it (I don't know how it works, like maybe you get two viewings, or maybe it's for three days). They also have a subscription service, too, just like Netflix.
I think Netflix in specific is designed the way it is because it evolved out of its original DVD service, which was pay X a month, then request any DVDs you want, which are mailed to you and you mail back after you've watched them. When they added streaming, they probably couldn't easily change from that model. And then the other streaming services followed the leader.
One of the reasons why my husband and I have not seen all the content we want is because everything is so fragmented with all the different services - for example, we haven't seen most of the newer MCU stuff because it's on Disney+ and we haven't bothered to subscribe. At this point, we choose what we want carefully and usually just buy whatever it is on Amazon, so that everything we care about is in one place, as you said.
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There are some pay-per-view services, such as Amazon, where you can either purchase a digital copy of something and watch it any time, or pay to rent it (I don't know how it works, like maybe you get two viewings, or maybe it's for three days). They also have a subscription service, too, just like Netflix.
I think Netflix in specific is designed the way it is because it evolved out of its original DVD service, which was pay X a month, then request any DVDs you want, which are mailed to you and you mail back after you've watched them. When they added streaming, they probably couldn't easily change from that model. And then the other streaming services followed the leader.
One of the reasons why my husband and I have not seen all the content we want is because everything is so fragmented with all the different services - for example, we haven't seen most of the newer MCU stuff because it's on Disney+ and we haven't bothered to subscribe. At this point, we choose what we want carefully and usually just buy whatever it is on Amazon, so that everything we care about is in one place, as you said.