The best streaming service for movies?

I've got Netflix and HBOMax, but is there one that's particularly good for films? A lot of you folks like the criterion channel, unfortunately I've had problems with app.

Crave and Mubi seem really good but I never actually had them, I am just going by the selections on them I have read, according to my taste.

Hopefully someone can answer this, but there's a free 3rd party (via Comcast) that has 2-3 minutes of commercials in the very beginning, and then none once the movie starts. Personally, I don't even watch DVR'd movies if I have to fast-forward all the commercials.

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Prime is pretty good if you wade through to find something you like. IMO, you already have the 2 best ones.

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Another factor for me is remote control, a lot of the apps lose their place of your movie if you pause it, like with YouTube: if I pause for whatever reason, I lose track of it if I wait too long. Netflix and HBOMax both remember where I was even though neither one is perfect...


I'm just gauging opinions, chromecast and mediocre internet limit a lot of my capabilities.

I get the most value out of the Criterion Channel and Tubi. The former has the most thoughtful selection, the latter is free and has a ton of good cult/genre stuff in good transfers, as long as you're willing to dig.

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I have (or have access to) a ton of services, and it really depends on what you're looking for. Ranked in order of how much I love/use them:

Criterion Channel--A great, rotating collection of films. Beautiful transfers. Feature films, short films, the occasional miniseries, and interviews/commentaries. Well worth the $10/month.

Hulu: Okay, the films themselves are hit or miss, though there are some really great things in there. But they also have TV shows and I pay for the $7/month ESPN+ add-on so that I can watch soccer, hockey, and cricket. At $13/month, probably the best bang for the buck in terms of how much I actually use it. (There's also a Disney+/Hulu/ESPN bundle, but apparently only with the with-ads version of Hulu)

Hoopla/Kanopy: There are both apps that you have access to through your library card in the USA and/or maybe Canada? Pretty good selection. You get 10 movie watches per month. Which, at a price of FREE, is pretty great.

Netflix/Prime: Some good stuff mixed in with a LOT of garbage. But I can often find a film or TV series that interests me. The quality of the prints of older films on Prime tend to be TERRIBLE at times, though.

Shudder: Obviously good if you are a horror fan, not recommended otherwise. But if you do like horror, this is well worth the $6 per month.

Tubi/Crackle/VuduFree/Peacock: All free services with ads (which I don't mind too much). Some good stuff on there. And, again, free.

I subscribe to 6 streaming services currently. Criterion channel is my favourite and has the best selection of films, in my opinion. Netflix has some good original films and recent films, but not enough older films to satisfy me. I don't like the layout of Prime's app and it is to hard to find stuff there. They have some good stuff, but not a lot. Shudder has a decent mix of horror films. Apple has a very small selection of originals, but no older stuff. Disney+ has some good films, but not a ton of options.

Check out some of the aggregator sites like Justwatch and Reelgood. You can see what's playing on various "channels" and make a decision with some knowledge of the available content. These sites are free, so you can look without buying.

Netflix was king for years. But streaming today is getting more and more like cable, i.e. - in order to see what you want you are forced to subscribe to multiple "channels".
It is called exclusivity marketing. Basically a service pays for the rights to be the only option for a popular movie to get people to subscribe.
IMO - pay streaming Vudu is the best. They have a huge choice in movies new and old. After that, probably Prime, after that probably Netflix. But with these two you have to wade through a billion movies to find something.

Cheers

Are you referring to "On Demand"? It comes with Comcast in my area and it's definitely a last choice. They don't really have all that much, charge $$ for some of the better movies, start with a couple minutes of ads and it seems like the selection is shrinking.

For those with really broad tastes of what they want to watch, Criterion is obviously a high water mark. They occasionally have a few real dogs, usually for some kind of completionist sake, or things that are more historically interesting than actually that good, but they have a lot of homeruns on there. Stuff you want to see but maybe haven't yet. Stuff you don't know that is great.


Mubi though is also a real treat for the same kind of audience. It offers no end of completely unknown films to casual and even hardcore viewers. And is remarkably consistent. I think I've maybe seen one of two from it that weren't that great.

I don't think I've ever seen a commercial from On-Demand w/ Comcast but there's a lot of 3rd party stuff, and I just can't remember what it was.

Tubi seems to be the best and youtube, but i look for older movies 70s-00 and alot of times i find out about movies and search for them and those two have them.



I hate searching through stuff why i dont have netflix or hulu anymore i bet id like criterion!

I think it's too varied to have one that's best just "for movies." But I will say that given Hulu's reputation for being primarily for TV, I'm consistently surprised by how many movies it has that I actually want to see.

Yeah, their overall selection is smaller, but I guess I'd say that the average quality of their movies is probably higher than services like Prime or Netflix that are SO saturated with junk.

Yeah, definitely, and it's interesting to consider at what point on the curve that actually becomes more valuable. Good stuff isn't as good if you can' find it, or can't find it without effort. There is definitely some multiplier at which a much narrower selection is actually better if more of it's good.

At this point my issue is that there is a lot of good stuff on Hulu . . . but I have seen most of it already.

I feel like Hulu does a great job of putting both their films and TV forward in a way that it's really easy to get to their best content.

Though at this point I rarely browse directly on any of my streaming sites. I have all of my want-to-see movies on a list on JustWatch, and I scroll it weekly to see what's currently available on any of my platforms.

Maybe it depends on where you are, but OD in my area has commercials inserted at seemingly completely random intervals, generally the kind of commercials that create the most jarring possible interruption in the movie action. It makes it very low on the usability scale for me. The declining number of movies suggests that it's not going to be there much longer.

I won't even watch movies I DVR with commercials, even though it doesn't take too much time to fast-forward, but I also know movies on channels (outside of TCM) will be edited in multiple ways.