ayase said:
Sure, renting a video cassette for £2.50 when it would cost £14.99 to buy didn't seem like a big deal. Buy renting a digital copy for £4.50 when it would only cost £9.99 to buy (the physical disc probably less given the insanity of digital pricing, and when a Netflix subscription is only £5.99 a month)? I can't speak for other people but generally, if I feel like re-watching a movie it's a few weeks/months down the line rather than the very next day. If you decide to rent again you might as well have bought, if you decide to buy later that's the cost of the rental down the drain.
Sure, in your comparison between some movies in 1994 and some movies in 2014, the world and its economy has changed in 20 years
In your specific example, there might be a good argument for buying instead. But it is not worth arguing specific numbers unless you are only talking about a specific example, rather than the practice in general. What about if, instead of your numbers, the rental was £3.99 and the retail £12.99? Certainly brand new movies do not come out at sub-£10 prices on physical media these days.
Again to pick holes in the use of specific numbers as part of your argument, I would be more inclined to think that the price of "rental now + purchase months later" would actually be pretty much the same as the price of "purchase now", most movies drop in price quite dramatically once they fall off the bestsellers lists.
If I know I'm buying an excellent movie that will not only be worth rewatching myself but is something that I might rewatch with friends or family, I often purchase (there has been a relative glut of movies this year like that - Gravity, American Hustle, The Wolf of Wall Street, 12 Years a Slave, and so on). If I want to watch something just on a whim or it's something I'm unlikely to watch again, I consider the "value" of purchasing to be a completely false economy, even at ratios that represent as much wasted "value" as in your example.
