Movie madness: Amazon, iTunes or Netflix?

Among the cloud-based services that appeal to just about everyone are streaming movies. And there are many services to choose from. The three biggest are Amazon.com, which is making a big splash with an array of cloud computing offerings, Apple Computer with its iTunes business and Netflix, the leading movie services company. For the past month I've been using all three in hopes of determining which is best.

Amazon's Video on Demand service boasts an impressive 40,000 movies available to stream to your home computer. (Let's assume you're not watching them at the office.) However, it still has some big holes. For example, Helvetica, an absorbing 2007 documentary about a ubiquitous font style, was absent, though you could buy it new for $19.99.

Apple's iTunes had Helvetica to rent at $2.99. However, Netflix's Watch Instantly service offered it for free. (Two thumbs up for both the film and Netflix.)

Some movies, such as West Side Story, promoted for 99 cents on iTunes, cost $2.99 on Amazon. However, Netflix required its subscribers (who are the only ones allowed to use Watch Instantly) to add it to their queue and wait patiently for the mail. On the other hand, The Pixar Story was available to stream immediately from Netflix for free, while Amazon didn't have it to rent nor even for sale. Ironically, iTunes did not rent The Pixar Story and charged a full $14.99 to purchase the documentary about the company Steve Jobs had founded.

The endless differences between how each service treated films makes judging them on content and price all but impossible. You may need to visit them all to find what you want for the right price. However, each service's distinctive user interface can be compared.

Netflix's approach is clearly the best. Its service was designed for users to quickly find and assess films. Its Web 2.0 tools make it easy to get information about a movie. By forcing you to use the iTunes client application, Apple is not providing a true online service. Besides, its iTunes store is not as elegant as Netflix's. ITunes forces you to spend a lot of time clicking here and there to get information about a flick. Whereas with Netflix, you simply pass your cursor over an icon and a full description appears.  Amazon's site is hopelessly anchored to its Web 1.0 e-commerce roots and is cumbersome to use.

Another online service with promise, Hulu, has a handful of movies available, but seems to be more interested in attracting television fans than cinema goers, as its advertising-oriented free streaming service suggests. TV watchers expect ads during a video, movie aficionados don't. However, Hulu did have one of my favorite bad movies of all time: The Crawling Hand. It is one of the best awful movies ever made; alas, when interrupted by repetitive advertisements, even it's too awful to watch.

For my money, Netflix's Watch Instantly service is tops. I'll use iTunes when I want to grab a movie to go on my iPhone, which, while not the "megaplex" Apple brags that it is, is still surprisingly viewable. For Amazon, well, I think it's a nice place to buy books.