A la carte means that I pay $1 for that episode of that series. If I don't want to see anything else that month I don't pay anything else. What Netflix sells is a subscription. Same as for phones back into the times voice only no data services: pay as you go vs subscription. I want watch as I go.
No, you are confusing pay-per-view with a la carte. The a la carte world everyone was clamoring for was to not have to pay for those channels you didn't watch. You were always going to pay for a subscription for the channel.
I guess but both the a la carte and PPV/VOD options do not operate as expected. The biggest issue is geolocation versus point of purchase, and it's very frustrating and often contradictory.
I live abroad and cannot use virtually any of my Amazon Prime since virtually every non-amazon original is blocked in the country I live in. When I was in the US, I could legally copy the file to my Kindle and view it anywhere (with the ticking timebomb that is the download expiry). While I understand the "technical" difference between this and streaming it while I'm abroad, I feel that it's splitting hairs - ultimate I'm using the same service to watch the same content, just instead of a browser cache it's temporarily loaded on my Kindle.
I understand we got here because of distribution rights,but what I don't understand is how it's still so consumer anti-friendly. I have no means of knowing whether or not I can view a video except to open it and check. With other streaming services, I have no idea whether or not their library is available in my country prior to purchase. It surprises me that this is not a function offered to let you browse the library and get an accurate idea of what you can and cannot watch. It may be a fringe case, but I would imagine for many countries, the idea of constantly moving back and forth between countries with different distirbution deals would be common enough that the support cases alone would justify such a feature.
