One point that you may want to consider is that a Netflix subscription + selected a la carte services is a powerful and cost-effective combo. In my household, Amazon & iTunes aren't in competition per se with Netflix. Netflix gets its monthly fee regardless. When the 3 year old wants to watch something, it's Netflix. When I'm browsing around, it's often Netflix. When we want something in particular and won't wait, it's Amazon or iTunes a la carte.

While I wouldn't mind if Netflix would start offering a la carte as well, personally it's not much of a bother. The videos play either way.

So the whole "vs" approach may not be the most accurate. I'm not limited to any one of them, and with a month of Netflix costing less than a single top-tier movie "purchase" on iTunes it's not hard to justify a bit of mix and match.

Do you know anything that can help you search through all of the different libraries? Searching individually is a huge pain.

This site will search all of the streaming services in one interface, and I use it for Netflix/Amazon if there is a particular movie I'm looking for: http://www.canistream.it/

Thanks! That is exactly the type of thing I was looking for.

Now+Free makes up for a for a whole lot of quality.

Joking aside: Comparing only movies really skews the quality focus of the marketplaces to purchasers vice subscribers. Subscribers would be more motivated/less inhibited to watch TV series and would receive better value, than a purchaser. If that is true then iTunes would have a greater motivation to drive quality movies instead of series, and Netflix would have the inverse motivation.

I guess my point was that less arbitrary categorization would be a more accurate study. Delivery, Audience, Length, and Top Level Genres may provide more insight into the comparability of the 2 libraries.

I have two issues with this:

1. Netflix doesn't get to choose what they can offer; the studios still dictate to them, and many times I know I can't find something just because some executive has a hair up his ass about "release dates".

2. You're assuming that popular == good.