Sometimes the cheapest isn't actually the most cost-effective.
If your friend only intends to copy Netflix's payment model without mimicking the user experience, it'll be hard to gain traction with users who've grown to expect certain things to work particular ways.
Now if your friend wants a Netflix-like user experience for watching videos, the thing to look into is adaptive bitrate streaming.
Here's a link to an article with some information about that.
While it may cost more to implement, there are savings in bandwidth to offset that cost, since videos don't have to download in full. Plus the difference in the experience of watching a video, for the user, can make or break a new site.
HTH