Not necessarily. Netflix Streaming only gets new movies early if they have a deal with the distributor/copyright owner (I.e. their deal last year with Disney).
However, what
@Bigtruckseries might be missing is that, just like with Amazon Video, you're not
buying the movies from Netflix, you're essentially paying a monthly fee for unlimited "rentals".
For me, there are movies that I
have to own, either because I've been waiting to see them or because I liked them in the theater, so I buy them as soon as they become available. There are also movies that I'll rent at first, & if I like them I'll go ahead & buy them afterwards. And then there are movies that are what my wife calls a "one-time watch". Maybe they weren't as interesting as we'd hoped, maybe the "plot twist" or "big reveal" that's integral to the story loses its effectiveness the more times you watch the movie. Or maybe the trailer/preview we saw made the movie seem a lot more interesting than it actually turned out to be. I would
hate to spend $15-20 USD on a movie, just to realize afterwards that I didn't like it, & have to settle for maybe getting $3-5 back by selling it to Half Price Books. By the same token, Redbox kiosks can only hold so many movies, & their selection skews towards "new" releases ("new" sometimes including the previous movies in a series that just released its latest sequel, or one of those annoying "Just released from the Disney Vault for a limited time!! Act now now now!!!!" editions) & a lot of direct-to-video releases that mimic the new releases [Man, I miss the brick-and-mortar video stores -- not Blockbuster, but the other chains like Hollywood Video & Family Video or the independent stores. Hollywood Video is gone, & locally we don't have any other video stores close enough to justify the trip].
That's what makes Netflix so economical. For the price of 6-7 Redbox rentals (3-4, if you get Blu-Rays), I can pick & watch hundreds to thousands of movies & shows, not only fairly new ones but also older ones that you can't find anywhere else. You don't want to know how long it took us to track down DVD versions of the Star Wars prequels to round out our Star Wars collection, or how long we've searched sometimes even at Half Price Books to find particular movies that
we were interested in, but didn't have enough "buzz" for the local retail stores to carry them.
And that also doesn't take into account TV shows. One of my wife's favorite shows that she watched this past summer was a
Canadian show called "Heartland". Never heard of it before, because it was never carried on any US networks (at least none of the broadcast, but I doubt the cable networks were worried about it either). Not to mention being able to have access to "classic" shows that we like, like Firefly & Farscape, which are very hard to find (& in the case of Farscape, can get ridiculously expensive if you want to purchase them, since they were only sold in 2-episode packs; at 20+ episodes per season & 5 seasons total, plus the Peacekeeper Wars mini-series, that's a lot of DVD boxes to buy).
So yeah, if you view Netflix as a replacement for actually owning DVDs, I can see why you'd be disappointed. But if you view it as an alternative to DVD
rental, & you're the type of person that rents 2-3 movies or more each week, it becomes very economical.