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- Jul 9, 2008
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The fine folks at Turner Classic Movies (TCM) have partnered with a number of independent studios and the Criterion Collection to launch their own streaming service. Criterion Collection is a great company that does the best to ensure that films look and sound as great as they can, while they have the rights to the title. They tend to specialize in older foreign films, but have a modest number of contemporary films as well. You have to be picky with what films you buy from them, because they usually cost you at least $30 a pop. As a result of Filmstruck, Hulu lost the Criterion Collection films. This has sort of underscored the need to talk about the elephant in the room: a lack of film content on streaming video services.
Netflix has steadily lost contract after contract-some because the rights holder wanted to create their own service, or because Netflix wanted to place greater emphasis on Original Content. Hulu has always sucked at getting its mits on film and only seemed to gain some measure of a film niche with the Criterion Collection archives. Amazon has had the best luck at being both a subscription service with films as well as a video-on-demand service with a large number of films. But it too has been lacking and has spent much of its time trying to become a player in television series.
That's why I killed my Hulu account and went to FilmStruck. At the moment it's a relatively modest service-focusing on older Warner Bros catalog and the scores of features yet held on by Criterion. However, already the selection is above what I was getting with Hulu when it came to the CC titles. Its device support is yet limited: Apple TV, Amazon FireTV, iOS and Android mobile devices and computers, but will expand to Roku, Chromecast, PS4, and Xbox One throughout the next year (well, this year, if you discount the next several hours).
There's a free 14 day trial, with three tiers of payment. One (or $6.99/month) is merely access to Filmstruck, which although occasionally gets you overlap with films Criterian has, tends to be a lot smaller than the 2nd and 3rd tiers. The 2nd and 3rd tiers get you additional access to Criterion's archives, but will charge you either monthly (at $10.99) or annually ($99), respectively.
Last night I used it to play The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003) - IMDb which hasn't had a wide non-VOD streaming presence up to now. It was all good fun watching some low-scale sword carnage.
https://www.filmstruck.com/
Here's to hoping that streaming won't just be the land of TV series.
Netflix has steadily lost contract after contract-some because the rights holder wanted to create their own service, or because Netflix wanted to place greater emphasis on Original Content. Hulu has always sucked at getting its mits on film and only seemed to gain some measure of a film niche with the Criterion Collection archives. Amazon has had the best luck at being both a subscription service with films as well as a video-on-demand service with a large number of films. But it too has been lacking and has spent much of its time trying to become a player in television series.
That's why I killed my Hulu account and went to FilmStruck. At the moment it's a relatively modest service-focusing on older Warner Bros catalog and the scores of features yet held on by Criterion. However, already the selection is above what I was getting with Hulu when it came to the CC titles. Its device support is yet limited: Apple TV, Amazon FireTV, iOS and Android mobile devices and computers, but will expand to Roku, Chromecast, PS4, and Xbox One throughout the next year (well, this year, if you discount the next several hours).
There's a free 14 day trial, with three tiers of payment. One (or $6.99/month) is merely access to Filmstruck, which although occasionally gets you overlap with films Criterian has, tends to be a lot smaller than the 2nd and 3rd tiers. The 2nd and 3rd tiers get you additional access to Criterion's archives, but will charge you either monthly (at $10.99) or annually ($99), respectively.
Last night I used it to play The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi (2003) - IMDb which hasn't had a wide non-VOD streaming presence up to now. It was all good fun watching some low-scale sword carnage.
https://www.filmstruck.com/
Here's to hoping that streaming won't just be the land of TV series.
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