The problem with your story is that you make it sound like the cable companies were calling the shots. I suspect that if the movie studies went to Comcast and said, "here's our library of movies that you can stream and give us a cut" they would have seriously considered it.
In 2002 they couldn't have gotten the movies to stream. In fact, I'd argue the only reason we've seen it happen today is because the movie industry saw how screwed the music industry got over streaming.
An interesting argument. That so much physical real-estate was once dedicated to video rentals suggests that a single physical media unit produced rental revenue which was a high multiple of its cost -- at least at Blockbuster's height. This also implies that the studios (to be more correct, the intellectual property owners) only received a small fraction of the value their IP provided to consumers. One would think that this state of affairs would have led the cable operators and the IP owners toward an agreement of some sort. Every dollar wasted on a strip mall lease could be a dollar in a combination of their pockets.
In 2002 they couldn't have gotten the movies to stream. In fact, I'd argue the only reason we've seen it happen today is because the movie industry saw how screwed the music industry got over streaming.