I think a download model would eventually be feasible. Eventually, when everyone has a T1 or T3 connection in the home, or fiberoptic. More importantly however, I think once you "pay per view" for let's say a movie, you should be able to view that same movie again and again anytime you want, without having to re-pay for the same movie.
If this causes a problem for the online movie rental provider or whichever ISP they partner with because you're using their bandwith for the "same content" then tough noogies. They need a different business model to address this type of redundancy, or else people will never truly want to adopt the streaming method and get away from owning physical media. I mean F*cking A!!! People just want to use the s*it that they have paid for in whatever way is pleasing to them. What if auto makers were to tell you when and where and how to use their vehicles because wait...wait...you don't really "own" anything, but instead are 'licensing' the use of the car from them. DRM on audio has already showed us painfully enough that it is a terrible idea to limit people in this manner, which is exactly why online music download stores are moving away from the DRM model, but it took way too long, and probably should never have been implemented in the first palce. (Now if only they would make songs available in an uncompressed format such as .wav, I may start using such a service. Good luck with that iTunes =)
Of course, to throw a monkey wrench into the whole mess, friggin' Comshaft has to come along and cap data transfers to 250GB/month. Just think how fast even an average joe can exceed this limit when he starts streaming movies all the time, not to mention YouTube videos, torrents, other downloads/uploads etc. And the sad part about it is, it's highly likely that the other ISPs will follow suit and introduce some similarly lame-ass restrictions. But I digress...
Bottom line is, if the consumer is happy, they have done something right, but how often does such a thing go over without a hitch?