Netflix vs. Hulu vs. Amazon Prime Streaming Showdown. The advent of mobile devices, set top boxes and powerful game consoles has made online video streaming services easier to access than ever before. While the market for DVDs and Blu ray discs is still going strong, instantly streaming the movie or TV show you want to watch beats a trip to the store and a high price tag for a disc nine times out of 1. For one thing, you dont have to change out of your pajamas. Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime have established themselves as the three most popular subscription video streaming services, with more than 1. While Netflix, Hulu and Amazon Prime are all worthwhile, each one presents a slightly different value proposition. A possible soundtrack listing for Justice League teases a song titled Unite the Seven, indicating another superhero will unite with the team. If youre planning to see SpiderMan Homecoming in theaters, you can also watch SpiderMan and SpiderMan 2, starring Tobey Maguire, on Hulu. Hulu also has most of. While programs like i. Tunes, M Go and Amazon Instant Video Amazons non Prime video streaming service sell a la carte content, the big three services charge you a flat monthly or yearly rate for as much content as you care to consume. MORE Best Streaming Video Services. Subscribing to all three services, however, would cost at least 2. While each one of the services is worthwhile in its own right, each one also presents a slightly different value proposition. Netflix is the great granddaddy of streaming services, providing a robust selection of movies and TV shows, although theres nothing too new. See full episodes and clips of your favorite shows. Choose a show or see whats hot. Thats a lot of money for DVR, along with a bunch of channels you probably never watch, but like we said, youve got options. No matter what you go with the basic. Gizmodo has a livestream on our Facebook. NASA is streaming the solar eclipse on its Facebook page. CNN is also livestreaming on Facebook. Twitter. Twitter is. Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube. Hulus selection, by comparison, is much smaller, but you can often find shows just a day after they air on broadcast TV. Amazon Prime is part of a much larger service that also nets you free shipping on Amazon products and a streaming music library. Which one stands out above the crowd Toms Guide put all three services to the test to find out. How We Tested. To test content selection, I compiled four lists of top 1. From Nielsen, an organization that monitors home media consumption, I examined 2. Watch Julie &Amp; Julia Dailymotion here. TV shows excluding sports, news and reality genres and the most popular movies based on DVDBlu ray sales. From IMDb, I used the top 1. TV shows of all time. Then, I tallied the availability of each movie on the service, as well as the number of seasons for each show if available. Each service received four separate scores, one for each list, which were averaged to find out which service offered the most content that, in theory, people want to watch. The results firmly favor Netflix. Netflix had 7. 0 percent of Nielsens top 1. Hulu scored a similar 7. Amazon Prime did not possess a single Nielsen top 1. Amazon Prime and Netflix traded blows in the IMDb shows Netflix provided 4. Amazon Prime scored 3. Hulu scored only 1. No service did extremely well when it came to movies, either modern or classic. Netflix had only one of 2. How to Train Your Dragon 2, while its competitors had two apiece Transformers Age of Extinction and The Hunger Games Catching Fire. From the IMDb list, Netflix and Amazon Prime had one apiece Pulp Fiction, whereas Hulu had none. All told, Netflix provided 2. Amazon Prime came in at 1. Hulu at 1. 3 percent. While it may not provide exactly what you want to watch, from a general standpoint, Netflix stands head and shoulders above the competition. Content One of the most important, but most difficult, areas to measure is how much content a streaming service offers. If youre looking for raw numbers, Hulu told Toms Guide that it has about 1. TV episodes and 5,3. Amazon is currently investigating this number, while Netflix declined to provide numbers. Even so, raw amount of content is not generally a reliable metric having hundreds of thousands of movies and TV shows isnt worth much if theyre not what you want to watch. Similarly, all three services have massive amounts of niche content and if were being totally honest tons of titles that just arent very good. If theres something in particular you want to watch, consult Can I Stream. It This search engine trawls popular streaming services both subscription and a la carte and tells you where you can find your TV show or movie of choice. Each streaming service offers a cluster of original programming. Jessica Jones is a recent Netflix exclusive. Note, too, that each service offers a number of original shows, such as Daredevil on Netflix, Deadbeat on Hulu or Mozart in the Jungle on Amazon Prime. Amazon Primes shows generally get the most critical acclaim, whereas Hulus tend to get the least. Netflixs shows tend to be the most popular. Winner Netflix. Although no one service can offer all content for all people, Netflix seems to have the most TV shows and movies that cater to the broadest selection of tastes. Interface. All the content in the world wont do you any good if you dont have a way to track it down, which is why interface is so important. A good UI should be pretty, intuitive, snappy and put as little space as possible between you and what you want to watch. I tested each service on an i. Pad, a Windows 1. TV a Play. Station 4. No matter the platform, Netflixs interface is modern, minimal, and attractive. Netflix offers the most striking design, full of dark reds and grays. The search feature is also much better than its two competitors. Rather than entering a full phrase and searching one title at a time, the Netflix algorithm automatically suggests titles. I could also rate titles once Id finished watching them, which means that the service gets quite apt at recommending new titles. Hulus interface provided a moderately good experience, with large graphics to represent shows and movies against a white background with a few green flourishes. Searching for shows can be a bit of a pain, though. Hulu does not autocomplete search queries, and while it does recommend shows based on what you watch, there are no ratings. This means if you watch a show once and hate it, it will still factor into which shows Hulu thinks you should watch next. Of the three programs, Amazon Prime easily has the weakest presentation. On set top boxes and game consoles, the layout is gray and utilitarian. Finding content is not easy, as the search tends to put a lot of Amazon content front and center, and make users dig around in sub menus for something as simple as genres. Amazon Videos web interface is lousy with blocky layouts and outmoded side menus. The interface on a computer, however, is like trying to search for content on a late 9. Watch Star Trek Into Darkness 4Shared there. The Amazon Prime video search works just the same as the rest of Amazons site plain white interface, orange text and lots of confusing side menus. It even separates out seasons of individual shows for maximum confusion. If you have a Fire device, such as a Fire TV or Kindle Fire tablet, the Amazon interface is actually quite gorgeous, with a slick slate background, helpful recommendations and smart content organization. On other devices, though, finding something to watch feels a lot more frustrating than exciting. Winner Netflix. With a smart, snappy search and an attractive interface across mobile, TV and computer platforms, Netflix easily places above its more labyrinthine competitors. Video Quality. In my tests, I didnt discover any significant difference between video quality and buffering time of the three services. In fact, video streaming quality tends to be much more dependent on a users home setup than on company servers. All three services can stream videos at full HD 1. Netflix and Amazon take it a step further by offering select 4. K TV shows and movies. At present, Amazon has a bigger selection of 4. K content, and also does not charge additional money to use it as Netflix does, so the service has a slight edge over its competitors when it comes to hardcore videophiles. Winner Amazon Prime. While both Amazon Prime and Netflix offer 4. K video, Amazon Prime doesnt charge you extra for the privilege. Availability. Luckily, streaming services are available on just about every device these days. Most mobile devices, smart TVs, set top boxes, game consoles, Blu ray players and computers have access to all three services with a few notable exceptions. Amazon Prime Instant Video is not nearly as widely available as Netflix or Hulu. Entertainment and Celebrity News, TV News and Breaking News. Things to Watch This Weekend Oct. Why you should watch The Walking Dead, The Simpsons and more.