Right, you basically still need to get the little plastic disks--from Netflix or elsewhere--if you want to watch quality movies, especially recent ones. Someone I know there told me a year or two back that people get streaming with the intention of watching movies but they end up watching TV shows instead.
This doesn't quite apply to me because I quit streaming when they did the whole splitting of physical media from streaming thing. And signed back up when House of Cards came out. But I do view streaming today as a source for TV shows and any movies I want to watch on it are basically lagniappe.
The algorithms and operations behind the storage and distribution of those physical disks is a marvel to behold though. A friend of mine was in Netflix's DVD operations for a number of years, and it was fascinating to hear what they had implemented (I can't do it justice). Imagine a bunch of Computer Scientists implementing sorting and data storage optimizations in the physical world, and you get the Netflix DVD distribution system.
If you ever meet someone from the DVD division, take him out for some drinks. You won't regret it :)
I see a lot of "recent" movies on rent/sale on YouTube (India). No subscription though. There is even an Indian version of Netflix - Bigflix, but content is old and scarce.
This doesn't quite apply to me because I quit streaming when they did the whole splitting of physical media from streaming thing. And signed back up when House of Cards came out. But I do view streaming today as a source for TV shows and any movies I want to watch on it are basically lagniappe.