Hardly anything ever goes on sale? They run weekly specials in a couple of categories with movies under $10. Every weekend they put one for sale for $5 -- it was Dawn of the Planet of the Apes this weekend. Very frequently they'll put out "build your video library" with a plethora of movies for less than $10, often as low as $5.
So about the sales thing, you couldn't be more wrong. I've purchased quite a few on sale.
Everything else, I'd say you're right. Apple stuff only works on Apple products as far as I know. The user experience is pretty good in my opinion and keeps getting better, but it still is limited.
Netflix is a different animal. Sure, it's great to have all those movies and shows for $10/month. But how much on there came out in a theater in the past two years? Netflix ironically has become more of a catalog TV show and original series/movies service.
It's quite a shame the industry hasn't quite evolved to a digital form of purchases that's nearly as portable between services as discs. Or at the very least I would love to see Apple build apps to run on Roku, Android, etc. so you could potentially access your content cross-platform. This would include the ability to loan movies to a friend comparable to the rental strategy with maybe a limit of 5 per month. I buy a lot of these movies knowing my parents can watch them on their Apple TVs since we're in a family plan. But it's quite imperfect since their accounts don't realize I own these movies until you drill down into family purchases.
