[thrownaway2424]

Using a 3rd party doesn't absolve the first party of responsibility for customer experience. In the iTunes case, the experience was bad, and incongruous with the rest of the iOS experience, which is usually good. That's why I reach for my iPad instead of my Nexus 7 more often than not, because I don't have time to waste on Android bullshit (and anyway, usually the Android's battery is dead). But if I pay for a TV show and then can't watch it until 40 minutes later, that's a terrible experience and it put me off iTunes for TV shows, forever.

[eridius]

One single bad experience which could have just as easily been caused by your ISP, or even by you (e.g. by using a DNS provider that interacts badly with CDN geolocation), turns you off forever from a service that otherwise acts better than its competitors? That's a rather extreme statement to make.

Besides, do you really think the competing services don't have the same potential for problems with whatever delivery network they're using?

[thrownaway2424]

Netflix and Amazon have a different failure mode where they deliver lower picture quality in order to maintain faster-than-real-time delivery. In the case of Amazon, when this happens you get an email within a day refunding the difference between the HD and SD quality stream, if you paid for the HD one. A very good experience.

[eridius]

You consider that a good experience? I hate it when I get a low-quality stream from Netflix. I actually would prefer to be able to force it to buffer the HD stream, even if that means waiting a bit before I start watching.