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Movie Streaming Subscriptions: Netflix, Amazon Prime & Hulu Plus Compared

35 points by igald 14y ago

bangbang 14y ago
Note- The Amazon Prime subscription also includes other worthwhile services (Free books, Free expedited shipping on other parts of their service, etc).
- trafficlight 14y ago
  I have Prime exclusively for the shipping, so streaming is just another bonus.
  - ComputerGuru 14y ago
    I would venture to say most people do, since Prime predates the video part by two or so years.
kevinconroy 14y ago
I realize it's hard to compare them as data can be difficult to come by, but if you say: "I believe that a good subscription service should not only offer me movies that I know I want to watch, it should also expose me to new and different cinematic experiences that I would have missed otherwise" then why did you limit yourself to the Top 100 Movies? Some of my favorite movies that I've seen on Netflix are foreign or independent films that I had never heard of and are no where near to being in the IMBD Top 100. Perhaps you can do a follow-up based on the entire size of their movie catalogs?
- igald 14y ago
  Do you mean going over the entire catalog and counting movies that are above a certain rating (let's say 8.0)? That's an interesting idea. I might go ahead and do that.
columbo 14y ago
So why doesn't Amazon / Hulu have just as many movies as netflix? Is it a licensing issue? It can't possibly be a bandwidth or availability issue.
- nicholassmith 14y ago
  I think it's a cross-licensing issue, companies obviously are pushing for single service contracts to emphasis why people should come to their service.
pwenzel 14y ago
Meh. They all offer different things. I subscribe to all three.
rdudekul 14y ago
If not for the Netflix movie recommendation service, I would have missed out on some of the best movies and documentaries I have seen in my life. On the other hand I use Amazon prime primarily for free shipping. What would be a better comparison would be a survey of how real users of these services find them. Each service has its strengths and weaknesses. Comparing the availability of top 100 IMDB movies isn't in my view a fair comparison.
siegecraft 14y ago
This misses the biggest "wtf" moment for me as a netflix user when I first started using Hulu plus (ie I was actually paying for the service): there are still ads!
- majormajor 14y ago
  Hulu Plus makes much more sense when viewed as a cable alternative (where there are also ads, but you pay a lot more) than a Netflix alternative. Netflix is going to try to get into the first-run content market, but right now if you don't have cable or OTA TV but want to be able to legally see any shows during their season, for just a fixed subscription fee, Hulu Plus is the option (though sadly it's missing a lot of stuff I'd like to see—I'd gladly pay at least $20 if it covered all the major broadcast and cable channels' original shows).
  - markelliot 14y ago
    The problem with comparing Hulu to cable is that with my cable subscription I'm free to record shows and play them back later - without the ads. Similarly, the on demand content rarely includes ads, and when it does they're sparse and extremely short. I often find myself starting to watch live tv shows about 20 minutes late and playing it as it records so that I can see the show the night it airs _and_ avoid ads. When Hulu will let me do this, I'll drop cable. (that said, I realize the premium I pay for these privileges and others with cable is steeper than it should be)
- evoxed 14y ago
  I had the same exact reaction. A whole hour of "what the hell? Do they not activate accounts on weekends or something?" Going back and forth between my laptop and the PS3 I finally found and read the FAQ one more time without skimming when I saw them pointing it out. I've gotten used to it now, although I wish they were a little more sympathetic– the connection occasionally craps out causing everything to freeze up, the only way to get back being either to stop and restart or turn the whole thing off. It would be nice if it could remember that I just saw two ads, for the third time in a row (and for some reason, the issues are only with hulu). Feature request: localized ads! I hate the US ads, but don't really trust Hulu JP content– I'd rather just watch the Japanese ads if they're the same as what's on tv. They're somehow less presumptuous, easier to ignore, or better-feeling when they're good (BOSS).
Dystopian 14y ago
As long as this is true - http://i.imgur.com/3Jq9Y.png http://i.imgur.com/3Jq9Y.png - the movie / TV industry will need to continue working toward a service that's bigger and better than Hulu Plus. As it is right now, they're giving most users very little reasons to close uTorrent and start moving over to legitimate alternatives.
- evoxed 14y ago
  Which is funny, because my mom gets more k-dramas than I ever dreamed existed and yet last I checked I couldn't find Pulp Fiction on any of these services, save for what looks like 35 different trailers for the feature length movie...
  - w1ntermute 14y ago
    That's because with K-dramas there isn't a huge existing market that would be cannibalized.
Steko 14y ago
This is interesting, it certainly shows how few of the top few hundred are available on any service. I'd love to see more services (Crackle, Hulu free, etc.) for comparison. I also think you should turn the lookup around, start with the list of movies avaialable and check the imdb/tomatoes/metacritic rating. Then you could show relative counts i.e. how many have a rating of x or better. Other resources: http://instantwatcher.com/ http://instantwatcher.com/ Is an up to date neflix only summary of what's available to stream including by genre/subgenre. Very importantly it tells you what's about to expire. http://www.canistream.it/ http://www.canistream.it/ Shows availability for various subscription and on demand options. May be out of date or failing at fuzzy matching. Great concept though. The piratealts blogger made this wiki page showing other options as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_streaming_aggregators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_streaming_a...
- igald 14y ago
  There is only one movie from the list (Metropolis) available on Hulu free. Turning the lookup around is an interesting idea, it might provide a more statistically meaningful result.
joshuaheard 14y ago
I use Netflix primarily for movies, while I use Hulu Plus mainly for TV shows. For example, Hulu Plus TV shows are usually available the day or so after airing on TV, while Netflix TV shows are available when the season DVD is released.
joshuaheard 14y ago
I use Netflix primarily for movies, while I use Hulu Plus mainly for TV shows. For example, Hulu Plus TV shows are usually available the day or so after airing on TV, while Netflix TV shows are available when the season DVD is released.
iSloth 14y ago
Is Amazon Prime the same as Amazon Love Film?
- justincormack 14y ago
  No. Sounds like you are in the UK/Europe. There is no streaming service attached to Prime over here, Love Film is a separate streaming service. Prime gives you free next day delivery.
pasbesoin 14y ago
In my personal experience, more and more content -- e.g. items I have previously queued -- has been disappearing from Netflix streaming. Which I find ironic, given the big marketing push they made for streaming a year or a bit more ago. This is one aspect of an increasing personal discomfort with "subscription" content services of all sorts. I think I'm about done with them and will go back to purchasing "perpetual access" products, whether physical media or DRM-free electronic distributions. These better suit my patterns of acquisition, sometimes delayed consumption, and the need and desire to go back and review / re-reference. Worse than the middleman, is the middleman who insists in staying in the middle (and profiting from it) forever.

35 points by igald 14y ago

Note- The Amazon Prime subscription also includes other worthwhile services (Free books, Free expedited shipping on other parts of their service, etc).

trafficlight 14y ago
I have Prime exclusively for the shipping, so streaming is just another bonus.
- ComputerGuru 14y ago
  I would venture to say most people do, since Prime predates the video part by two or so years.

kevinconroy 14y ago

I realize it's hard to compare them as data can be difficult to come by, but if you say: "I believe that a good subscription service should not only offer me movies that I know I want to watch, it should also expose me to new and different cinematic experiences that I would have missed otherwise" then why did you limit yourself to the Top 100 Movies? Some of my favorite movies that I've seen on Netflix are foreign or independent films that I had never heard of and are no where near to being in the IMBD Top 100. Perhaps you can do a follow-up based on the entire size of their movie catalogs?

igald 14y ago
Do you mean going over the entire catalog and counting movies that are above a certain rating (let's say 8.0)? That's an interesting idea. I might go ahead and do that.

columbo 14y ago

So why doesn't Amazon / Hulu have just as many movies as netflix? Is it a licensing issue? It can't possibly be a bandwidth or availability issue.

nicholassmith 14y ago
I think it's a cross-licensing issue, companies obviously are pushing for single service contracts to emphasis why people should come to their service.

pwenzel 14y ago

Meh. They all offer different things. I subscribe to all three.

rdudekul 14y ago

If not for the Netflix movie recommendation service, I would have missed out on some of the best movies and documentaries I have seen in my life. On the other hand I use Amazon prime primarily for free shipping. What would be a better comparison would be a survey of how real users of these services find them. Each service has its strengths and weaknesses. Comparing the availability of top 100 IMDB movies isn't in my view a fair comparison.

siegecraft 14y ago

This misses the biggest "wtf" moment for me as a netflix user when I first started using Hulu plus (ie I was actually paying for the service): there are still ads!

majormajor 14y ago
Hulu Plus makes much more sense when viewed as a cable alternative (where there are also ads, but you pay a lot more) than a Netflix alternative. Netflix is going to try to get into the first-run content market, but right now if you don't have cable or OTA TV but want to be able to legally see any shows during their season, for just a fixed subscription fee, Hulu Plus is the option (though sadly it's missing a lot of stuff I'd like to see—I'd gladly pay at least $20 if it covered all the major broadcast and cable channels' original shows).
- markelliot 14y ago
  The problem with comparing Hulu to cable is that with my cable subscription I'm free to record shows and play them back later - without the ads. Similarly, the on demand content rarely includes ads, and when it does they're sparse and extremely short. I often find myself starting to watch live tv shows about 20 minutes late and playing it as it records so that I can see the show the night it airs _and_ avoid ads. When Hulu will let me do this, I'll drop cable. (that said, I realize the premium I pay for these privileges and others with cable is steeper than it should be)
evoxed 14y ago
I had the same exact reaction. A whole hour of "what the hell? Do they not activate accounts on weekends or something?" Going back and forth between my laptop and the PS3 I finally found and read the FAQ one more time without skimming when I saw them pointing it out. I've gotten used to it now, although I wish they were a little more sympathetic– the connection occasionally craps out causing everything to freeze up, the only way to get back being either to stop and restart or turn the whole thing off. It would be nice if it could remember that I just saw two ads, for the third time in a row (and for some reason, the issues are only with hulu). Feature request: localized ads! I hate the US ads, but don't really trust Hulu JP content– I'd rather just watch the Japanese ads if they're the same as what's on tv. They're somehow less presumptuous, easier to ignore, or better-feeling when they're good (BOSS).

Dystopian 14y ago

As long as this is true - http://i.imgur.com/3Jq9Y.png http://i.imgur.com/3Jq9Y.png - the movie / TV industry will need to continue working toward a service that's bigger and better than Hulu Plus. As it is right now, they're giving most users very little reasons to close uTorrent and start moving over to legitimate alternatives.

evoxed 14y ago
Which is funny, because my mom gets more k-dramas than I ever dreamed existed and yet last I checked I couldn't find Pulp Fiction on any of these services, save for what looks like 35 different trailers for the feature length movie...
- w1ntermute 14y ago
  That's because with K-dramas there isn't a huge existing market that would be cannibalized.

Steko 14y ago

This is interesting, it certainly shows how few of the top few hundred are available on any service. I'd love to see more services (Crackle, Hulu free, etc.) for comparison. I also think you should turn the lookup around, start with the list of movies avaialable and check the imdb/tomatoes/metacritic rating. Then you could show relative counts i.e. how many have a rating of x or better. Other resources: http://instantwatcher.com/ http://instantwatcher.com/ Is an up to date neflix only summary of what's available to stream including by genre/subgenre. Very importantly it tells you what's about to expire. http://www.canistream.it/ http://www.canistream.it/ Shows availability for various subscription and on demand options. May be out of date or failing at fuzzy matching. Great concept though. The piratealts blogger made this wiki page showing other options as well: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_streaming_aggregators http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_streaming_a...

igald 14y ago
There is only one movie from the list (Metropolis) available on Hulu free. Turning the lookup around is an interesting idea, it might provide a more statistically meaningful result.

joshuaheard 14y ago

I use Netflix primarily for movies, while I use Hulu Plus mainly for TV shows. For example, Hulu Plus TV shows are usually available the day or so after airing on TV, while Netflix TV shows are available when the season DVD is released.

joshuaheard 14y ago

iSloth 14y ago

Is Amazon Prime the same as Amazon Love Film?

justincormack 14y ago
No. Sounds like you are in the UK/Europe. There is no streaming service attached to Prime over here, Love Film is a separate streaming service. Prime gives you free next day delivery.

pasbesoin 14y ago

In my personal experience, more and more content -- e.g. items I have previously queued -- has been disappearing from Netflix streaming. Which I find ironic, given the big marketing push they made for streaming a year or a bit more ago. This is one aspect of an increasing personal discomfort with "subscription" content services of all sorts. I think I'm about done with them and will go back to purchasing "perpetual access" products, whether physical media or DRM-free electronic distributions. These better suit my patterns of acquisition, sometimes delayed consumption, and the need and desire to go back and review / re-reference. Worse than the middleman, is the middleman who insists in staying in the middle (and profiting from it) forever.