The hill I will die on: Streaming is rubbish – take me back to the golden era of DVDs | Frances Ryan

Streaming has many strengths: producing some of the best shows of recent years, convenience, the chance to spend hours of your life scrolling through algorithm-suggested content only to watch nothing and then pass out at 1am. But when it comes to watching films on the platforms, I am one extortionate paywall away from buying a DVD player off eBay and Googling: “Does Blockbuster still exist?”

It is not simply that Netflix and co are killing cinema – although, yes, that is a thing that is objectively bad. It is that the advent of streaming has made watching a movie in your own home more costly, more restricted and often incredibly annoying.

As a millennial, I like to think I grew up in the golden era of film. You could go to the cinema for a fiver to watch a movie that wasn’t three hours long. And really brilliantly, you could take a trip to your local DVD shop to rent something or buy a physical copy that was yours for ever (at least until the format became outdated and you sold it in a bundle for £1 on Facebook Marketplace).

Nowadays, if you rent a film that has recently been released it’ll cost you up to £20, far more than if you saw it in most cinemas – plus you’re paying the electric and heating bills. If you want to see last night’s Oscar contenders as part of your standard streaming packages before 2027, you will probably need to subscribe to every major platform as well as to satellite. And if you feel like watching an old classic, make sure you set aside plenty of time to find it. When I fancied rewatching Sense and Sensibility recently, it struck me how it had become the norm to have to search through Netflix, Prime and Disney+ to work out which one currently owns the rights to each film. I eventually unearthed it on iPlayer. I think it was quicker for Jane Austen to write the novel.

• Frances Ryan is a Guardian columnist