Jan. 24 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. last week joined a growing number of companies offering online movie rentals, adding the service to its iTunes store. How does it stack up against the competition?

I tested the new offering from Cupertino, California-based Apple against Amazon.com Inc.'s Unbox, Netflix Inc.'s streaming feature, and the service from CinemaNow Inc., a private company based in Marina Del Ray, California, which is co-owned by EchoStar Communications Corp., Microsoft Corp. and Cisco Systems Inc., among others. All of them use the Internet to deliver movies to your personal computer. Except for Netflix, they all allow movies to run on a mobile player.

Amazon Unbox and CinemaNow offer the best mix of new and old titles for rent. ITunes had only a handful of new releases and several old flicks a few days after it started. Apple promises to expand the list to 1,000, with some in high definition. Amazon offers more than 4,000 movies, CinemaNow has more than 1,000 and Netflix has more than 6,000, which includes TV shows, according to each company's spokesman. Netflix and Amazon don't carry Disney film rentals.

When you're dealing with a vast collection of movies, the ability to sort alphabetically should be a given. On Amazon, it isn't. I found the site's sorting options inefficient. It was far easier to find movies on CinemaNow and iTunes, where I sorted by title within each genre. Netflix allowed me to browse all titles in alphabetical order. For overall site navigation, CinemaNow is the least cluttered.

Download or Stream

Once you've selected a movie, you must register for an account, provide payment details and get the service to work. Amazon, CinemaNow and iTunes require their own software to run on your computer, while Netflix's movie player streams its movies via Internet Explorer. Only iTunes is both Mac and Windows friendly; the other services run on Windows XP or Vista systems.

Each movie is one gigabyte or larger so you need lots of storage space on your machine and a fast Internet connection. Expect slow downloads over DSL. A cable modem is ideal. On mine, I was able to watch Netflix movies on my PC within a few seconds. CinemaNow took about 30 seconds before I could press play, while it downloaded the rest of the movie in the background. Amazon and iTunes took several minutes to download before I could start watching. To download an entire movie, expect to wait more than one hour.

The quality of the video downloads or streams depends on your computer's features. Naturally, high-end components lead to better performance. On my 2-GHz computer and 20-inch monitor, for example, movies looked almost comparable to their DVD counterparts. The quality was less appealing on my laptop's 11- inch screen.

Watch Now

Once you download a flick from Amazon, CinemaNow or iTunes, you must watch it within 30 days. You get 24 hours to finish viewing it after pressing the play button. Then, it automatically disappears. This is where Netflix has an edge: Because it runs on a subscription basis, instead of a pay-per- view format like the other three services, I was able to start and stop a movie without any time restrictions.

The disadvantage to Netflix is that it uses streaming technology, which requires a continuous Internet connection. With Amazon, CinemaNow or iTunes, you can load the movie on a laptop or a portable media player and take it with you.

To watch downloaded flicks on a big-screen TV, you'll need a device that the service supports. Amazon allows viewing via a TiVo digital video recorder; iTunes rentals extend to an Apple TV digital media receiver; CinemaNow supports Microsoft's Xbox 360.

Only U.S.

The four services I tested are currently available only to U.S. customers. An Apple spokesman says users with a U.S. billing address can download movies while outside the country. CinemaNow has international sites tailored to audiences in the U.K. and Japan.

Although the technology for delivering movies over a Web connection has arrived and can be done relatively easily, it doesn't yet sway me into changing my movie-renting habits. DVD movie rentals by mail and at my neighborhood video store give me a much wider selection than the Web-based downloads or streams.

If I'm in the mood for recent releases, I'd rather flip through the choices on my cable TV's on-demand and pay-per-view channels and then watch them on TV instantly.

Movie Rental Sites Scorecard

Amazon Unbox
Movie rental prices: $1 to $4
Rating: 6/10

Apple iTunes
Movie rental prices: $3 to $5
Rating: 7/10

CinemaNow
Movie rental prices: $2 to $4
Rating: 8/10

Netflix
Monthly subscription fee: $5 to $48
Rating: 6/10

To contact the writer of this column: Grace Aquino at aquinograce@gmail.com

Last Updated: January 24, 2008 00:14 EST