Earlier today, Vox.com published a piece with the curious title “Why streaming will never live up to home video.” Not surprisingly, the piece had everyone in Decider HQ scratching our heads. We understand what it’s like to be nostalgic for the glory days of video stores. We, too, miss the fresh plastic smell of a brand new cassette tape, the sweet video store stickers saying, “Be Kind, Please Rewind,” and all those teens sheepishly trying to sneak into the porn section. Aw, remember when kids used to blush when they found themselves in close proximity to pornography?

But that sort of sensory, tactile nostalgia was not what author Todd VanDerWerff focused his piece on. Rather, he complains that it’s harder to find obscure titles on streaming (say what?) and it’s more expensive to keep up to date with everything than it was during the days of VHS proliferation. This leads us to believe that he either had a magical video store inside his house with a free copy of every movie and show ever produced or, more likely, that his memory has turned hazy with time. Streaming offers viewers FAR more opportunities to discover new titles on the cheap than home video ever could.

Early in his piece, VanDerWerff laments that shows come and go from various streaming services without much explanation. It’s true that the current streaming boom has transformed the fight for streaming rights into a “kind of arms race,” but it’s not as though this bizarre behind-the-scenes battle for rights is anything new. For decades, television shows and movies have found themselves tied up in various syndication and video licensing disputes. For instance, one of the reasons why it was difficult for Disney to figure out how to get Star Wars on streaming was because the films’ distribution rights were tied up with 20th Century Fox and an expiring deal with Starz.

Additionally, there are a great many films and shows that were and are held back from video distribution on the whims of its parent company. Circling back to Disney: Ever heard of the Disney vault? Throughout the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s, the Mouse House purposely held back most of its epic animated library and cherry-picked odd titles to unleash on consumers. By limiting availability, Disney ramped up expectations (and prices) for those titles.

If it appears that streaming availability has no rhyme or reason to it then it’s because video distribution rights have had no rhyme or reason. The surge in new streaming platforms only makes it transparent how byzantine all these back room business deals were in the first place. So, yeah, we are in a spot where it’s tough to figure out which titles are now available on which platform. If only there was a website that told people where to stream their favorite shows and movies … Oh wait, that’s us! That’s Decider.com.

Another one of his complaints is that (and we quote) “Yeah, you can find anything — if you’re willing to pay extra.” Griping that you have to pay money to rent or buy new titles on VOD seems a bit ridiculous to us when you consider that’s precisely what you would do at a home video store. It’s even more befuddling a complaint when you remember that if you wanted to rent a new movie the week it came out on VHS or DVD, you would have to get in your car and drive (or walk or bike or subway) to your nearest video store. Then you would have to find it on the floor — and woe be unto anyone looking for an obscure title on an unkempt sales floor! Even if you found where it was shelved, you would have to hope that it was still in stock. Then you would often have to pay a marked up rental fee for a new release (and many video rental chains limited the number of nights you had the rental), you’d have to wait in line to pay, and then you would get dinged with a “late charge” if you didn’t make it back to the video store (another car trip!) in time. Sounds like a pain, right? VOD hacks through all this hassle and gives you your rental or purchase with a click and a quick download. Also, you can do it from your couch! That’s not just service; that’s magic.

There’s also the indisputable fact that streaming does offer a much more vast library than your local video chain ever could. Your local video store or public library has a limit to how many Blu-Rays, DVDs, and/or VHS tapes it can house. It’s just a matter of physical space. The internet, however, is just about endless. Until streaming came along, it was nearly impossible to track down classic shows that weren’t in syndication. Maybe you can’t stream every single episode of your favorite classic shows, but you can find far more in the internet ether than you ever could on video. Your typical local library probably have had a VHS version of the 1975 Saturday Night Live premiere episode or the Best Of Eddie Murphy, but it’s not going to have a catalogue of sketches spanning the last 40 years the way that Yahoo Screen and Hulu both do. Shout! Factory TV specifically has made it its goal to bring cult classics to modern audiences for free, and if it’s a collection of underseen cinematic masterpieces you’re on the hunt for, look no further than to the Criterion Collection on Hulu.

And what about the “loss of untempered discovery” that came with the collapse of the video store economy? We’ll pretend that Mr. VanDerWerff didn’t have a membership at the corporate-as-hell Blockbuster in his neighborhood and instead frequented the kind of location where a goateed cinematic savant in a hoodie told him what obscure new thing he should watch. Well, believe it or not, but that’s kind of sort of the role that we try to fill here at Decider.com (sans the goatees). We tell you what’s new on all the major streaming services and we go out of our way to highlight crazy little gems. Yeah, we know you know that Master of None is streaming on Netflix, but did you also know that The Seven Dwarves of Auschwitz is, too? WELL YOU DO NOW.

If you want to relive the glory of discovering new titles on your own, we can also offer a couple of suggestions:

Write a random word in the search box. Trust us. You’ll find some new weird stuff. (Like the Seven Dwarves Of Auschwitz.)

Sign up for a smaller niche program for a free trial. Streaming services like DramaFever, Acorn TV, Fandor and Shudder offer expertly curated content. DramaFever focuses on addictive soaps from all over the world, Acorn TV is a crime drama and Anglophile’s dream, Fandor is the best of indie cinema past and present, and Shudder is the new mecca of horror. We’ve found new and offbeat favorites from exploring all four of these sites.

If you’ve noticed, we haven’t even mentioned rudimentary things like optical resolution (there’s no comparing 4K visuals with what you’d find on grainy VHS), your options to watch programming outside of your home at any time and from any place (planes, trains, automobiles!), or the ability to just watch something else if what you picked out at first ended up sucking. (We can’t tell you how many Friday nights were ruined in our household by our father’s wildly esoteric taste in movies.)

Streaming is still a new technology, and therefore companies are still working out some of the kinks; we’re not saying it’s perfect, not by any means. However, most of what’s wrong with streaming is what was wrong with home video, too. It’s all well and good to yearn for the simplicity of the past, but let’s not forget that the past also kind of really sucked. If you’re complaining that it’s harder to discover new titles on streaming, then it’s probably because you haven’t discovered Decider.

P.S. Let’s be friends!