Doesn’t Hulu have the Criterion library?
They lose it on November 11.
What Charmtrap said. Contract with HULU expires then.
That pricing is just so hard to justify if TCM is already part of a cable package you have that lets you watch them on the go or even Cast to your TV. When a Showtime monthly addon to Prime is $8.99, or HBO is $14.99 as a standalone, paying $11 for Criterion + TCM for a bunch of legacy movies they’ll never have to promote is steep.
FYI, they promise ROKU, Chromecast, and PS4/XBone apps in “early 2017”.
So this went live today, with a nice surprise: they offered beta testers two months free (until the end of 2016). So…I’ll report on how the selection holds up, etc. Definitely appears more robust, so my biggest issue going forward is likely to be the ease of streaming to TV.
Regular subscribers can get 14 days free, but I’d honestly hold off a week or two. If you need your Criterion fix, I think Hulu has them for another week or so.
Last weekend, they finally added Chromecast support for iOS and (more importantly to me) Android devices.
I feel like I’ll now get better at chopping through my watchlist of 90 or so movies.
Edit: now that I’ve sampled the Chromecast feature on multiple Android devices, I think Filmstruck should have held off on wide release. Instead, they should have tried out their Chromecast in tightly monitored test screenings. Gradually they should have built up a limited release in art-houses in proven, open-minded markets. That is, it doesn’t seem to work.
Edit to edit: turns out I should have read the specs more closely. I needed a chromecast of the generation 2 or above, and I while I thought that’s what I had, turned out I only had a Gen 1 Chromecast. I upgraded equipment, it now streams very well. My earlier gripes are no longer valid. Though the app could stand some UX love, especially for the phone. It takes forever to scroll across a watchlist, the “add” and “delete” buttons could be made more distinct from each other, and their selection could be more robust. For instance, they just had a John Sayles feature. I did enjoy finally seeing “Eight Men Out” — what a cast! — and there are two Sayles movies they offer that I hadn’t seen, and one that I had. But I’ve been wanting to watch about four different Sayles movies for years and those aren’t offered. (I really wish I had caught “Amigo” in the two hours it was playing in my city.)
That said, there’s more geared up to watch so far than I’m realistically going to watch this year.
I am most disappointed that for a TCM offering that they do in fact offer mostly art house and not enough of their standard fare. Where is my Casablanca, Bringing Up Baby, along with Bowery Boys and other of the classic, non-arthouse films?
I suspect they are making too much on demand.
Is there anything like a billboard top 100/500 for streaming?
Is anyone still using this? I don’t have any streaming stuff, but I’m thinking of getting a Roku Streaming Stick. Any word on the Roku support? Is the playlist still anemic?
I’ve finally seen a couple of movies I’ve wanted to see forever, like The Player, The Best Years Of Our Lives, The Red Shoes, and more. I guess I’m coming up on the end of my year’s subscription. The decision to renew or not is tough. I love the idea of it, and when I want to sit down and watch a movie, it’s great. I primarily stream it from my Android phone or tablet to my TV, and the app is NOT great. (I had to buy a new Chromecast to do that, too; it wouldn’t work on ths old one.) Pausing a movie and trying to restart it is an exercise in frustration. Scrolling through my queue takes forever. For some reason it thinks I’m only a quarter of the way through most of the movies I watched, and they are still in a “continue watching” queue. Like Netflix, I have way more movies in my queue than I’m likely to ever watch, some of the titles come and disappear. Finally, though I do love seeing some cool and obscure movies, honestly, bringing up the service can feel like a chore compared to Netflix, HBO, or Amazon Prime Streamin’. I have to be in the mood to further develop my cinematic education, which means I rarely get around to doing that.
There is still a lot of potential that I hope they last long enough to realize.
Their device list includes Roku. I don’t have one, so I don’t know how it works but it works great on Apple TV. I’ve really come to love Filmstruck. I don’t even have a Netflix sub anymore…between Filmstruck, Mubi and Tribeca Shortlist (and Amazon Prime), my streaming needs are met.
The playlist is extensive. You can see it all right here:
https://www.filmstruck.com/us/watch/browse-all/
And the stuff that’s rotating in and out is here:
The issue I have with them – and still do – is that they seem to have segregated the Criterion stuff into a more-expensive subscription than the original ask for the service.
And yeah, the technical end of things, as Djscman notes, is pretty bad. The issues he mentions in the app were issues noted all over the beta forums well before launch.
Do the movies on Filmstruck include the Ben Mankiewicz intros/outros like you see on TCM? I like hearing the misc bits of trivia before watching classic movies.
Most of them seem to. And the Criterion collection films have most, if not all, of the extras that are on the DVDs/blu-rays.
That’s good to know. I noticed they have a 14-day trial now, I’ll have to check it out.
I wish this was available here. I am such a TCM addict, and Ben Mankiewicz does a fantastic job.
Filmstruck a little more indispensible now.
Yikes.
Goodbye fair Filmstruck. We knew ye well.
That’s a shame, hopefully more of this classic cinema will find its way to places like Netflix and such then.
That’s terrible news. I was really planning on subbing sometime next year and watch a lot of classics.