Verizon as a low-cost value leader? No, we haven't entered some weird alternate universe. Rather, Verizon's V Cast video service is a gentle and affordable introduction to watching video on your phone, though it doesn't go far enough to scratch the itches of people used to the 500-channel wealth of cable TV.

V Cast costs $15 for unlimited use, the best deal of any service I tested. You find clips through a good-looking but annoyingly sluggish tabbed menu interface divided into News, Entertainment, Sports, and Weather. Each main category actually has a slew of subcategories, but you have to scroll down by hand because phones' screens generally only show four or five options at a time.

Verizon's clips are middle-of-the-road stuff, a little bit for a lot of people. NBC, ABC, CBS and CNN admirably fill the news buckets; ESPN and FOX are the best sports affiliates. There are classic cartoons, Sesame Street, and a little bit of Nickelodeon for the kids.

But Verizon is missing many of the more innovative features that make Amp'd Live and Sprint TV intriguing. There are no live TV channels, no radio channels, no movies (short or long), and no offbeat viral videos from small content providers. For folks who want to go a bit beyond basic cable, that makes V Cast a little boring. Music videos are another weakness. Though Verizon offers a decent selection of content, each video costs a prohibitive $3.99.

Verizon's delivery is smoother than that of Amp'd or Sprint, though. The clips I tested loaded faster, at 10.2 seconds on average, and rebuffered less often than on either of the two other EV-DO-based services. But talking heads often had problems with lip-sync, a problem I also saw on Amp'd Live.

At $15 per month, V Cast is a fun way to see what video delivery on cell phones is like. But I fear that Verizon's stack of content just isn't broad enough (or targeted enough, like that of Amp'd) to keep subscribers coming back month after month.