For people like me, the huge advantage with the Marquee system is you never have a
late fee. I am very bad at returning movies to traditional
movie rental locations, so this is a perfect solution for me. Before I got Netflix I often wound up paying more in late fees than the movie is worth.
Still, I only wind up renting about one movie a month, which could equate to the cost of buying the movie, but at least I can't run up 80 dollars in late fees for a 20 dollar DVD :)
I only wish local stores would start doing something like this, because it sucks to be in the mood for a certain movie, so you go put it first in your queue, send back a DVD you have, and then wait a week. Bah.
If some local movie rental place did a Netflix marquee style rental system, I'd go for it in an instant. Although I can see why they don't, because, one little store couldn't handle the bad mojo they'd get when people go in to get something specific and it's not in stock.
I imagine Netflix must have dozens of copies of lesser-rented movies, and hundreds of copies of popular movies, so that there is enough volume to allow for at least a few copies to always be in stock, or at least for one to be returned soon enough that it doesn't matter.
BTW, I remember when Netflix started, it was a regular rental service. It was like 4 bucks per movie to rent, and you had to return it within a certain amount of time. This is sort of like how normal movie rental shops do it now. Whoever was cool enough to come up with the idea for the marquee system should be paid enough money to retire :)