Filmstruck / Criterion Channel

At this point they should wait until the Hulu contract for the Criterions expires.

Yep. I wasn't planning on starting any free trial until everything was available.

Launched.
Looks like the Criterions are up with an 11-day overlap with Hulu. Seeing a lot of fussing on the Facebook page about errors while setting up payment.

Anyone start using this yet? Any thoughts (apart from the still unavailable (?) Criterions?

I'm in, just getting the apps installed now. I need a tivo app! Apple and Amazon will do for now.

Sound like it's worth waiting a few weeks for them to get all the bugs worked out

Not available on Roku til Jan so nope for a while. Also copy on their site suggested that virtually all Criterions wd be available but several that I've searched for are not (incl All That Jazz, ugh)

They have someone responding to comments on Facebook, putting on the shiny happy face but being really vague with specific questions.

Some Guy Named Dave: Your Criterion selection seems to be quite limited. Are you ever going to offer the same number of Criterion titles as Hulu - over 900?

FilmStruck: Hi Dave, on the #CriterionChannel side you will find the largest selection of Criterion releases available to stream

Me: That doesn't really answer the question that was asked...

FilmStruck: #CriterionChannel has the largest Criterion selection available streaming, more than was ever available elsewhere.

Me: Ozu on Hulu: 30 features, 2 shorts and a trailer
Ozu on Filmstruck: looks like 18 features

Filmstruck: (crickets)

Huh, why would it have less than Hulu does? That doesn't make any sense to me. I did notice through a cursory search that they had at least two titles not on Hulu (Godard's Every Man for Himself and Yang's A Brighter Summer Day), so I was hopeful that maybe it had more than Hulu.

It doesn't have all the Oshima titles that are currently on Hulu either

I'm hoping they're still loading up the buffet table. They have quite a few things that aren't on Hulu -- Blood Simple, that JFK documentary stuff. They got The Killing of a Chinese Bookie back, which disappeared from Hulu a year or more ago.

I'm hopeful too, though the way filmstruck has been marketed and rolled out has dampened my expectations all around

Even Criterion doesn't have the rights to all the Criterions anymore

yeah, otm, and i'm sure there are a number of criterions that got dvd release, but where they never had streaming rights. the more i search around on filmstruck the more i think that WilliamC is probably right that they're still adding movies to the service.

hm. no amazon app even!

TBF, this is the day where they're going nuts with the press.

They managed to go with all the devices that I don't own. Not sure it's worth picking up a new AppleTV just for this.

seems lame that it's not on xbone/ps4; that's what a very significant chunk of the population use to stream stuff, no?

Oh wait, I do have an Amazon Fire TV in my office, guess I can watch Kurosawa while filling out payroll forms and stuff.

filling empty space with the greatest cinema ever made is kinda why i'm willing to give up a c-note for even the dream of that actually happening.

They managed to go with all the devices that I don't own. Not sure it's worth picking up a new AppleTV just for this.

― Kiarostami bag (milo z), Wednesday, November 2, 2016 1:41 PM (three minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

A Chromecast is $35

for me, it's about having a tv with limited HD inputs... one for the ps4, one for the tivo and switching stuff out means a painful boot up period and extra hassle so i find i just don't do it

It's not available for the Chromecast, according to them That means I can screen mirror if I got one but have to leave my laptop up and running the entire time.

Screen mirroring quality is pretty meh, IME, but it's been a while since I used a Chromecast.

It's available for Chromecast in December, you won't die if you have to wait 30 days before you can see Andrei Rublev

It will be available for XBox One and Roku in six months, pretty sure I could find plenty to watch on Netflix and Amazon Video until then. We're talking about now, though.

It's available for Chromecast in December, you won't die if you have to wait 30 days before you can see Andrei Rublev

― Whiney G. Weingarten, Wednesday, November 2, 2016 11:11 AM (fifty minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

also as a public service announcement the criterion print of andrei rublev is shitty and you can watch a much better transfer on youtube right now

They said PS4 "first half" of the coming year, so most likely I'd wait a while. No Chromecast/Roku support at launch seems pretty weak, though.

Roku support was slated for January 2017 acc to some infographic I saw on their website but now cannot find (because their website seems to be three completely different websites cobbled together and filled with contradicting info).

I just want to stream All That Jazz why is this so damn hard

The latest from their Facebook flack to commenters is "early 2017" for Roku.

I didn't do an exact count, but it looks like roughly 900 films on the Criterion side. Since there are a lot that haven't migrated over from Hulu (yet), that means there are a lot of additions. Browsing around just a little bit I saw Blood Simple, the other 2 films in Wim Wenders' Road Trilogy to go with Alice in the Cities, some Harold Lloyd that hadn't been on Hulu, some New Wave.

*British New Wave

When is this up for AppleTV?

December, allegedly. (4th-gen only, nothing earlier)

Signed up last night; Hulu account expires tomorrow. Started with No Home Movie and Ornette: Made in America.

cool, any glitches? I'll sign up soon but may wait a little bit if they're still working stuff out.

I pushed the film last night to my 3rd-gen Apple TV using AirPlay and my iMac completely froze about 20 minutes into the movie; had to do a hard shutdown and restart. Everything has worked fine today, watching directly on the Mac. I'll try AirPlaying again tonight.

D.A. Pennebaker's first film, Daybreak Express, is just the sort of wonderful tidbit that makes this site worth the money to me. I never would have seen it if they hadn't paired it with the feature it ran with in 1958 (Neame's The Horse's Mouth). Filmstruck isn't perfect (all the hosted intros I've seen so far are horrible), but it's got a lot going for it.

Hosted intros? Don't like the sound of that.

Anyone know if FilmStruck is 1080p, as opposed to Hulu's 720p?

people on the Reddit Criterion/Filmstruck forums have complained about quality but Criterion-people seem borderline audiophilic in their craze for picture quality

If they're concerned about picture quality they shouldn't be streaming

^^^^^

AppleTV app is live

people on the Reddit Criterion/Filmstruck forums have complained about quality but Criterion-people seem borderline audiophilic in their craze for picture quality

They are basically the Steve Hoffman folk of the film world. BluRay era has been a golden age for system setup/region coding online dick-size contests.

A FB friend (who may be an ILXor, though I can't remember his screen name) who knows how to wrangle databases heard my plea last night and extracted the data from Filmstruck's "Browse All" source code that allowed me to make this:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1TWx8-b5fbqenVr6r64hf3GktufPAgc61akPIvKoV2XA/edit?usp=sharing

A spreadsheet with Filmstruck's current offerings, sortable by title, director, year, runtime, country. Note 2 sheets, Basic Filmstruck and Criterion Channel. It may be less useful than the one I made of Criterion on Hulu, because films are being added and dropped much more frequently.

Thanks for that!

some surprising omissions: very little Minelli, only one Lubitsch, no Tod Browning, no Sturges, no Sirk, only a handful of Fellini, only one Cukor... plenty of oddball curation clearly swung by copyright ownership instead of best options too: four Robert Downey Sr. films but no Putney Swope?

xpost
You're welcome! I'm going to try to keep up with arrivals and departures to keep the spreadsheet up to date, but they are being VERY stupid about announcing that sort of stuff (I found out Mulholland Dr. is leaving the site at the end of January, but not from Filmstruck itself) so if anyone wants to mention comings and goings on this thread, that'd be great.

Nice list! Wow, that's a strong sales pitch...ugh. I'm really disappointed because the little Roku TV I bought this year for the living room has no option to turn off its (subtle, not always dstractingly present) soap-opera effect and by the time I was sure it wasn't my imagination, it was too late to return the thing. So now I'm sort of hesitant to plunk down for Filmstruck when it goes Roku since it'll be sabotaging the entire ''get myself educated in great film'' thing.

thanks!

aw man, was hoping YEAST would be part of the mary bronstein thing. still haven’t seen it and I don’t think it’s streaming anywhere

― comrade jhøsh (k3vin k.), Wednesday, March 18, 2026 2:33 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

It's there under American Independents

― mizzell, Thursday, March 19, 2026 5:57 AM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

I just checked and it’s not there. is it country specific?

According to the April updates link, it'll appear in April, I think.

yeah mizzell meant it's on that page under the American Independents heading

oh! I didn’t scroll down enough. nice!

Lots of drive-in stuff.

haven’t used it myself but some friends love eternal family and it does look pretty great…

https://eternal.tv/

May 2026 additions: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/9126-the-criterion-channel-s-may-2026-lineup

hard to explain how excited I am for Desk Set

Desk Set is fun! I watched it about a decade ago after learning that Hepburn's character was supposedly modeled after someone who had worked for my then-employer.

Love Desk Set.

I have basically been trawling through films of the 30s and 40s over the last few months so I’m glad to see a bunch from that era coming in May

that's a cool connection, jaymc

My brother recommended Desk Set ages ago and in the meantime, without my ever seeing it, I decided to do a phd about work + technology (I guess it wasn't hard to explain), and yeah I'm definitely curious about the rest of that collection -- I've seen The Whole Town’s Talking, His Girl Friday, and The Apartment and they're all good to masterpiece (well, one good and two masterpieces).

June 2026 additions: https://www.criterion.com/current/posts/9155-the-criterion-channel-s-june-2026-lineup

Ooh, maybe I'll finally watch The Searchers.

You didn't watch the YouTube I posted of it?

omg i’m gonna finally see walker

I think the only movie I've ever watched on YouTube is The Heartbreak Kid