I'd guess that Starz was looking to put their toes in the digital streaming water, rather than that they necessarily expect this to be the price for perpetuity. I've dropped my core cable and love me my Netflix, but I have to admit that $8.99 (1 DVD at a time, unlimited streaming) is probably not sustainable, if you want to see new content that isn't being subsidized anywhere else, which is the hypothetical end-game here. Frankly I'd pay triple that if they forced the issue as long as they stay ad-free.

Also Starz is, well, nice and all, but at any given time there's only a few really A-list movies on there under a year old, and a motley collection of relatively recent B-list movies. It's not necessarily quite as big a name as they might like to present themselves.