A close-up from “Great Guy,” a public domain movie streaming on Amazon.

The other night I bought the streaming version of the 1931 James Cagney movie “Blonde Crazy” from Amazon.com and then held my breath. Film quality from movies on Amazon, particularly early Hollywood pictures, is problematic. Many have been copied and recopied so often they‘re blurry and sludgy—unwatchable on a big TV screen and sometimes even on a computer. With “Big Business Girl,” for example, I had to shrink the browser down to 1/4 size to make it palatable.

That one was a rental. So it goes. But nobody wants to own such a low-quality thing. That’s why I held my breath.

In the last year I‘ve bought about six or so digital movies from Amazon—“The Great Buster,” “Pain and Glory,” some early Cagneys—and they were all fine. “Blonde Crazy” wasn’t. Soft and blurry—like watching a 2005 upload on YouTube. You felt dumber just watching it. I certainly felt dumber paying 11 bucks for it.

Plus side: I was able to get a refund. There's a feedback option on each page, and I clicked it, and went through the hoops until I was able to message with an actual person—or a very responsive bot—and he/she/it was able to refund my order. If not my time. Or my temporary spike in blood pressure.

I made some suggestions, too, which he/she/it promised to kick upstairs. We‘ll see. Here they are. I think they’re good ideas for both Amazon and its customers:

1. Before any purchase or rental, let customers see a 30-to-60 second clip so we can judge the film quality. 
2. Include the film quality on the movie's page—as with used books on Amazon's site.
3. Allow rent-to-own. If you stream a rental, then want to buy it, Amazon should knock off the rental price you just paid from the purchase price. Apple already does this with iTunes. Buy a single, then buy the whole album, it's minus the single price. 

I wouldn't mind seeing Amazon enact all three of these reforms, to be honest, but particularly 1) and 3). Right now, despite the refund, I'm wary of renting/buying old movies from them in the future. I assume that's not how they want their customers to feel.