Why isn’t it fair? No reason you can’t just torrent a 10GB Blu-Ray rip of the movie. It’s free, easy and probably takes less time than going out and buying a DVD.

I would say that side-to-side the quality of Netflix-like streaming is A LOT better, at least when it comes to video. Audio is probably comparable since both DVD’s and streaming services usually use Dolby Digital or Dolby Digital Plus.