Look, the entertainment industry doesn't give a rat's ass about the consumer. None. What they care about is money; and they will do everything they can to make the customers *think* they're not getting screwed. In reality, they are. I hate watching physical discs; the 5 minutes of anti-piracy along with all the "comming attractions" they play are just entirely too much. Unlike VHS...most players won't let you skip this. Nothing says "shoot me" like watching a 5 year old DVD talking about movies coming out in theater like they're brand new. They weren't like this when they came out, not nearly this bad. It was a ruse to get them adopted by the public before reverting to the old ways.
When the movie industry was unable to use legal action to prevent the rental of video cassettes; they responded by raising the price. The jokes you used to hear about a VHS copy of E.T. going for well over $79.99 was actually true. The idea was if they raised the prices of tapes, the video stores would stop purchasing them. However, it didn't really work; and the end result was most people were unable to afford VHS tapes and the rental business boomed. They soon started selling movies on a sliding scale, newer movies being much cheaper than older movies; which is why you'd often see 30 copies of the newest release and maybe 1 of an old one.
Of course, the advantage of DVD is they can lock you out from skipping specific aspects. You don't really own the movie if you're forced to watch trailers and advertisements in front of it.
There was a company (the name of which I do not remember); that operated on a "virtural DVD" rental type deal. They had loads and loads of DVDs in automated carousels, racks of DVD players, Slingboxes, and robots that would physically load each disc in to a player connected to a Slingbox. According to copyright law, this is 100% legal, and is the same as renting a DVD. However, the movie industry quickly stepped in, sued them for infringement, and shut them down.
Similar with the TV networks and Aereo. Aereo is receiving the signals on OTA tuners assigned to a subscriber and allowing them to stream them online. It's legal, as place-shifting has already had some success. However, TV networks are trying to the the SCOTUS to rule it illegal becuase "they are cutting in on thier business model". Now...the old business model was they transmit programming that was paid for by advertisements; but ever since the cable act of 1992, affiliates and other broadcasters make a "demand" a retransmission fee for your service operator to provide it to you. So, they're claiming that Aereo, which legally is not retransmitting the signal and is receiving it from the air; is trying to be forced out of business by big broadcasters. If broadcasters don't get their way; they've already talked about leaving TV and going to an online distribution system. That's not to mention if you watch a program from their website; you're getting as many (if not more) advertisements as in the broadcast; and the same with on-demand. Apparently getting paid to broadcast to them once isn't enough. Look on your cable/satellite bill; I'm sure you're paying a local channel fee somewhere.
Of course, many argue the additional ads on online distribution of the content is the result of the writer's strike; but one could claim they could still afford to pay the royalties if they weren't so worried about bleeding everyone dry.