Image courtesy of Wilfedor via Wikimedia Commons

Netflix, the company whose DVD-by-mail approach forever changed the business of video rental in the US, has expanded the list of functions it delegates to Amazon's cloud computing services.

In addition to the applications Netflix has been running on Amazon Web Services' infrastructure for more than one year, the company will now also deploy its members' movie lists, Web site search, movie transcoding, recommendation system and other applications into the cloud, according to an AWS news release.

"At Netflix, our members want the greatest convenience, selection and value," Netflix VP of Engineering Kevin McEntee said in a statement.

"We're excited about using AWS because it lets us focus on innovation that enables a great member experience, without requiring us to devote time and energy to building undifferentiated data centers."

To date, Netflix is using AWS for transcoding and storage of its movie content library for delivery on new devices like Nintendo's Wii and Apple's iPad.

Another function the video company uses Amazon's cloud for is delivery of movie and member metadata within its Web site for use by its recommendation engine.

Amazon Elastic Map Reduce is used to enhance the quality of video Netflix streams to its users.