• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, September 13, 2010

Or are you just happy to have your on demand film library available anywhere, anytime? When Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone 4 and iOS 4 in the early summer, he shared the coveted on-stage-with-Steve spot with top executives from Netflix because the arrival of the movie rental store on the iPhone was long-awaited. More than any other media company, Netflix has successfully leveraged what I call the 'post-desktop' Internet. Not only does it give subscribers access to their streaming media film collection on all major game consoles and select streaming boxes and disc player, but the company has used these positions to super-charge its subscriber base. For Netflix's core constituency, which has always tended to be tech early adopters, the iPad extension was just icing on an already-attractive cake.

I admit, I have been in love with having the Netflix Watch Instantly library being available on so many of the platforms. But it is easy to be blinded by the sheer technical achievement of synchronizing your library, queue and movie viewing experiences so seamlessly. In point of fact, many of the Netflix apps on these platforms are a bit of a mess. First, the Xbox, PS3, Wii and iPad iterations all use different interfaces and navigational schemes.

Whether by design or technical necessity, the Xbox version uses that game console's scheme of thumbing through seemingly endless stacks of cover thumbnails in a long row that goes off into infinity. On the PS3 there is an odd navigation through tiers where the user moves laterally across film titles and then vertically into its details.

The iPad app may actually be the worst of all, in that it is remarkably sluggish, despite the superb video it renders. I don't envy the challenge Netflix faces here, but it demonstrates a hurdle many content providers encounter when distributing their wares via apps across platforms. Do you try to maintain brand consistency and navigational familiarity over and above the conventions that are native to that platform?

The iPhone iteration of Netflix is understandably sparse but efficient and at least as snappy on a 3G network as some of its predecessors over WiFi. The queue and personalized recommendations are all pulling from the same cloud as the Web and post-desktop applications, so you can see lists of films that are contoured to your own recent viewing habits and resume everything you already started watching. Like the game console versions, user review detail is absent. A glaring omission in all of the Netflix apps is the absence of trailer previews for the film catalog. This is one place where Apple's on demand film library is superior to Netflix. You can get a deeper taste of a film with a trailer.

All that said, the lean-back film experience in the iPhone app is superb. You can tap a play button on every thumbnail in the film catalog to start or resume the film instantly and without intervening menus. Unfashionable as it may be to say, AT&T's 3G network can perform beautifully when it is cooking. Movies literally started faster on my 3G network in Netflix than they do on the iPad and game consoles. The interface lets you watch in letterbox or zoom to a larger view. The rendering is pin sharp. I don't know what Netflix does in the buffering process for iPad and iPhone apps especially, but they are packing extraordinary detail in here. On the higher-res iPhone 4 display the level of detail, color depth, and shadow detail makes you forget quickly that you are watching a big screen feature on a handheld...until your arm starts getting tired, of course.

Lesson learned. When the hardware, software and content selection are spot on will we be watching long-form video content on our smart phones? Shhh! Michael Corleone is about to whack the Dons of the rival families. I'll tell you when the movie is over.