press REC on your VCR and… make a worse copy of the already pretty bad copy you received over the air. Subsequent generation copies would be really bad. Sharing your copy with a friend involved physically transferring it and possibly not getting it back.
It really isn't comparable to a directly copyable digital form.
If you like the 1970s way, prop your phone up on a table and use the camera to record a movie off of Netflix. You will have a much better result than we did with VHS tape in the 1970s. You can probably find a filter to crap up the video to look like VHS.
VCR's where generally better recordings than the 'cam' footage of the latest blockbuster leaked on the internet. People sometimes are watching films before the special effects are done.
The core issue is if a company can make 501 million instead of 500 million they have zero incentives to make less money. Which is why cable companies scrimp on backhaul even when it's a rounding error on their costs. And why companies are so focused on DRM etc.
You can say that, but I don't think the price levels of current media (particularly digital media) are set to maximize profit. I think they're set to embed an idea of high value, and I'm uncertain of the purpose. It could be for legal reasons, prestige, accounting, I'm not sure.
I recently got an Amazon Fire stick, attached to a projector, after many years without any kind of television. Naturally, a projector hitting a 100+ inch screen magnifies any flaws in compression or image quality, so you want to play back good quality media. Amazon generally serves up just about acceptable image quality (I'd say they're about 1 standard deviation worse than Netflix in encode quality), but the prices are just ridiculously high - they're about 10 times more than I'd be willing to pay. As a result, I don't watch anything that isn't available via Netflix or Prime, and haven't bought or rented any other content. I'd spend low thousands GBP on media - I have in other form factors - but not if it nets me only 200 hours or so of content. The prices are just ridiculously high.
IMO, this is mostly around the pain of spending money not the actual cost of content.
Cable runs around 1k/year or more and has advertising, which used to be a fairly normal thing upper middle class people bought. Split that into into individual purchases and your likely spending far less. You just happen to notice that your spending money where subscriptions are a background thing.
Also, don't forget Netflix DVD is still an option.
I'm not in the US. The idea of paying 100 GBP per month for cable is alien to me, never mind 200. It's just not worth that much.
Physical media is considerably less expensive than digital media, and has a secondary market. I wouldn't bother with renting physical media ever again.
Imo there's a price corrective missing for digital media.
Just TV. Bundle savings vs just internet = basic package + DVR + Movie channels + fees & taxes. Actual bill over 120/mo.
1k/y or 83$/month is on the low side for just TV. A 200$ a month cable bill was actually fairly common a few years ago once you have multiple DVR's and premium channels etc.
Note this is really deceptive and even then it quickly hit's over 83$/month before getting HBO, or equipment, or fees, or taxes. https://www.verizon.com/home/fiostv/
But that "worse quality" was still, for many people, "good enough"
Aside from that, I think you're arguing that it's a matter of scale, parent argues that it's the same thing.
A similar, modern example might be a slow, error prone cellular connection where a user copies 1 movie a day to their friends at tremendous cost to their cell bill.
It really isn't comparable to a directly copyable digital form.
If you like the 1970s way, prop your phone up on a table and use the camera to record a movie off of Netflix. You will have a much better result than we did with VHS tape in the 1970s. You can probably find a filter to crap up the video to look like VHS.