Re: Historical?
Having had the opportunity to explore Netflix recently courtesy of a relative I was visiting, I doubt streaming services will make much of a difference.
I was surprised how little content Netflix had, particularly in terms of back-catalogue stuff and after getting rather tired of the arms-length UI finally decided there wasn't anything I felt compelled to watch there and then. There seems to be a wider range of content on Amazon, but again there are glaring gaps and the default UI is equally hopeless (and probably bound to be so on a TV with a regular remote).
Pirate sites appear to have a wider range of content and make it easy to find what you're looking for - which seem to give them an edge still.