> No it's not. It's just the cheapest.

If you set it up so it's convenient and usable by everyone in your house, including visitors, just like Netflix, it's not much cheaper. Electricity and occasional hard drive purchases add up. I bet mine averages out to ~$300/yr. I'm not sure whether just buying discs for stuff we actually watch, and the occasional 1-month binge-subscription for a series or something, would work out better, or not, but it's not a slam-dunk sure-win for piracy on the cost front.

> Except for a few outliers like you describe, streaming is an order of magnitude less painful.

Sort of. A good piracy server takes some time and effort to set up, certainly more than subscribing to even ten different streaming services would, and of course is beyond what most people can accomplish with computers, period.

However: 1) "I just plug in my laptop an play the movie" probably is less painful than having a bunch of streaming services, though not quite as friendly for all members of the household, and 2) Once it's set up, in actual use by people who aren't maintaining the system, the well-configured piracy server is less painful than streaming services, for those users.