Another reason to sail the high seas

$25 to rent the movie, one watch within max 24 hours after you start watching it... Or $5 more to own it. Scammers.

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I can understand not being interested in the movie or the price point or digital "ownership", but why does it make them scammers to offer the purchase at a price that heavily amortizes down the cost per viewing?
The rental price is on par with two theater tickets and they're not playing games with pretending like the purchase price should be double because you plan to watch it at least twice.
- Well shouldn't rental be much less than the price of buying and much less than the price of cinema tickets? That's how it used to work.
  
  Personally I prefer theaters so I think that price is high, yes. But rentals also used to be less convenient because the wait was longer and the TVs were lower quality.
  
  The reduced wait time I think is the only real leg to stand on. It arguably doesn't make sense to undermine theatre ticket sales by making it cheaper at home, although I'd argue that it should be that the theatre option is the premium option that should cost more while home streaming is the cheap option if you don't want or need the theatre experience which should make it a complimentary income source to ticket sales not a threat to it but I guess they reckon they'll make them both cost the same until the cinema run is over so they never make less than a full theatre ticket price until then.
  I hate how things being convenient means they have to cost more. "Convenience fees" are such a crock. If it cost them more to offer the convenience over their usual service, but they don't run video stores any more and this has arguably less overhead than the renting physical media business did so it should be cheaper for everyone and yet instead they contrive additional expense on top because they made it convenient.
  
  The rental price will eventually be much lower, but they've been doing this lately where they let people watch movies that are still in theaters for a significantly higher price.
- Why am I seeing this capitalist apologia on a pirating forum?
  It makes them 'scammers' because:
  they are calling it a purchase, but its not a purchase. It's a lease.
  the rental price is arbitrary anyway. It costs them the same to stream the media, if it's $25 or $0.25. Hell, it costs them the same if they stream it as a purchase as it does to stream it as a rental.
  you don't have any legal option to control your own digital full res copy of any media that you pay for, but they take your money anyway so you can pretend that you do.
  I consider that to be a scam.
  
  I don't think you know what a scam is. The terms of the purchase are spelled out clearly and nobody is being deceived.

279 comments