But you never owned it in the first place... even when you had a hard copy. You only owned a license.
Now, trying to get a replacement copy (based on your license) when your original gets damaged, is another story, but yeah, you never owned the movie.
My problem with physical media is that it's not possible to carry it all with you... so when you want to take a road trip you have to be selective and predict what your kids are going to want to watch. When kids damage the media, you are stuck purchasing another license to something you already have a license to use, and when the player you own stops working, and you can't buy another (think VHS) you are unable to continue to use the media. All these things go away if you buy a license directly from the stuido, and are guaranteed perpetual use. I don't love Netflix... their model is only going to last so long as studios still avoid doing the distribution themselves. If you want my prediction for the future, it's this:
A company will build an end to end streaming solution that includes a server and an app that has iron clad (read mostly iron clad) copy protection that allows a user to view movies from said device, and even create local copies for airplane mode and such... this company will then approach movie studios and show them this: If you buy our streaming solution, then sell licenses to your media directly, users can download the app for free, and view your movies. They then go to other content providers and do the same. If the studio doesn't want to host all that infrastructure, the company will do it as a service. The price per movie will drop as the cost of distribution is taken out of the chain, making stuff cheaper for end users, and making more money for the studio. If Netflix is the company to do this they will survive... if not, they'll die. The problem with netflix right now is that their model is subscription based, which is why I think most studios aren't on board. But if studios were getting a better cut (subscription pays too little), and customers were still getting a perpetual license (Netflix hates loosing content almost as much as I hate Netflix loosing content), then who wouldn't be happy with that arrangement?
In short, will the dinosaurs in the room please stand up? Physical media is a thing of the past... but the perpetual license is the thing that people still want. As soon as someone assuages the piracy concerns of the studio and assuages the loss of access problem for the consumer... there won't be a reason to do anything else.
