Archived Criterion Streaming Discussion

[Perkins Cobb]

Oh, wow. I never realized there was a difference between SD and HD on Hulu+. Is there a way to tell somehow before I watch a title?

Yeah, they make it hard, but it's indicated in the Availability line: "Subscribe to Hulu Plus to watch this show in HD on TV, mobile and computer." Whereas for an SD title like The Plough and the Stars it reads: "Subscribe to Hulu Plus to watch this show on TV and mobile devices."

[yeahimajerk]

Not sure if I follow you, Perkins Cobb. My apologies. I already subscribe to Hulu. Is there a different way to differentiate between SD and HD?

[andyli]

When you pause the video, didn't the resolution and buffer status show up at the top??

[andyli]

Has Criterion taken Godzilla offline from Hulu? Cannot seem to find it at the moment...

[knives]

It turned out they didn't have the rights and it should be on Classic Media's page.

[Andrew_VB]

Do I have to change a setting somewhere to tell it not to compress as much? I have a fast cable connection and set the resolution to HD before viewing.

There are two things in play here I think. Coming from a video background, my guess is that Criterion has to rip these files into Adobe or Final Cut Pro to compress them in order to get a small enough file to be able to stream online. Then it gets rendered into 720p. So it could be something to do with the way the file was encoded that is causing you some picture problems. If that's the case then there is nothing you can do about it. For me, I noticed "Branded to Kill" was a mess no matter where I watched it, whether on a mobile device via 3g or my computer or on my flatscreen via my PS3, nothing worked. The picture was all pixelated and choppy and there was a lot of artifacts everywhere.

Second, there should be a setting within Hulu that will allow you to choose your Picture Quality. For me, on my PS3 controller, off the top of my head, it is the R1 button. Depending on if you are watching on a Wii or Xbox or Roku or a AppleTV the option will be different but it should still be in there for you, you might have to fish around to find it. When I tap R1 it allows me to select Auto, HD, SD or Low - I usually keep it to auto that way depending on my internet connection it'll run the smoothest. However, I have noticed that some of encoding they've done to some titles is just not good and no matter what speed you are watching it at, you are going to notice compression on the screen.

Are you getting a noticeably choppy, stuttery picture? Or are you just noticing like screen compression within the blacks if you are watching a black and white film?

just for the record, it's not that difficult to compress a movie file into a small enough file size that is able to be streamed online and not have blocky artifacting. it's generally your connection with their server that would be causing this. also, for a large company like hulu, it's most likely that criterion would not be doing the encoding themselves but that they would deliver the high resolution version and hulu will encode it themselves to fit their exact specifications.

[albucat]

I can't say that this is how Criterion does it, but I used to deliver videos to Hulu for a television network and at least as of very recently Hulu lacked an auto-encoding system. Each company delivered videos encodes themselves. That being said, Hulu has extremely specific guidelines about how they're encoded and are quite picky about this.

Having had a Hulu subscription for quite a few months now I have to say I'm much happier with its streaming service than I am with Netflix's. The encodes there seemed much more variable, to the point that there are a number of times I was excited to watch something on Netflix and a minute in realized I just couldn't take the video quality. I'm particularly happy with how many Eclipse releases are in HD and how good they look.

[yeahimajerk]

@ Andrew_VB & @ albucat : Thanks for your feed back!

@ albucat: Agreed, I am very happy with Hulu streaming also. IMO, it is better than Netflix as far as quality goes - plus Hulu works much better on mobile when you are using a 3G connection.

I did notice something funny last night. I was watching Winter Light last night and I noticed that some of the subtitles were missing! Has anyone else noticed this, either on this title or any other titles?

[Minkin]

No new titles, but for those of you (Americans/international-with-proxy) without a Hulu+ account, you can watch several films for free - but only for the next 6-13 days. Looks like you get a choice of Leningrad Cowboys, Match Factory Girl, Le Havre and Breathless (this last one is being promoted by KY as the valentines day movie to watch).

Unfortunately, there will be commercials, but at least the cheapskates among you will be able to watch Le Havre for free - before it is eventually announced.

[Murdoch]

Breathless (this last one is being promoted by KY as the valentines day movie to watch).

I'd love to hear what Godard would say about a personal lubricant sponsoring one of his movies.

[Perkins Cobb]

Hey, watching movies with commercials is perfectly fine ... if it's 1987.

[mfunk9786]

It's free, what do you expect?

[Jeff]

Saura's Peppermint Frappé has been added!

[SpiderBaby]

nice.

[SpiderBaby]

Valerie and Her Week of Wonders is up with a bunch of other films.

[Peacock]

Those other films need to be listed here as they include El Sur!

[SpiderBaby]

the floor is all yours

[AlexHansen]

The Householder (Ivory)
My Crasy Life (Gorin)
Pearls of the Deep
Poto & Cabengo (Gorin)
Silence (Shinoda)
Sunnyside (Chaplin)
Two English Girls (Truffaut)
Apostasy (Kinoshita)
Broken Drum (Kinoshita)
Immortal Love (Kinoshita)
Tragedy of Japan (Kinoshita)
The Living Magoroku (Kinoshita)
A Legend or Was It? (Kinoshita)
Farewell to Dream (Kinoshita)
Sing, Young People (Kinoshita)
The Good Fairy (Kinoshita)
Daisies (Chytilová)
El Sur (Erice)
Ballad of Orin (Shinoda)
Valerie & Her Week of Wonders (Jires)

[zeroism]

The Czech titles are all in SD, which could possibly suggest that they don't have HD masters, and in turn explain why titles like Daisies (and presumably Valerie) are being relegated to Eclipse.

The Gorins, however, are in HD; not surprising to anyone who's seen the DVDs, I'm sure.

[Minkin]

So we should be expecting about 20 Kinoshita Eclipse boxes then?

That said, I find it disturbing that you can watch some of these films in HD on Hulu+, but not on their actual disc release.

[matrixschmatrix]

Is Two English Girls a surprise, or is that something we knew Criterion had their mitts on?

[Harmonov]

Has El Sur ever been confirmed before now? It seems that it has gotten quite a few requests in the past.

[Jeff]

Is Two English Girls a surprise, or is that something we knew Criterion had their mitts on?

They sub-licensed it from Wellspring with the rest of the Mk2 Truffaut Estate titles a decade ago, and the rights officially moved to Janus when Mk2's deal with Wellspring expired in 2006 or so. They've been sitting on it for a while.

Has El Sur ever been confirmed before now? It seems that it has gotten quite a few requests in the past.

Criterion copped to having another Erice some time ago, and it was widely assumed that it was El Sur.

[htshell]

The Gorins, however, are in HD; not surprising to anyone who's seen the DVDs, I'm sure.

The Gorin titles were mastered in HD and are available from Janus Films in HD for theatrical exhibition.

[Arthur House]

Is Two English Girls a surprise, or is that something we knew Criterion had their mitts on?

They sub-licensed it from Wellspring with the rest of the Mk2 Truffaut Estate titles a decade ago, and the rights officially moved to Janus when Mk2's deal with Wellspring expired in 2006 or so. They've been sitting on it for a while.

That leaves The Woman Next Door and Confidentially Yours! from their holdings. I predict bare-bones Criterions of those two eventually coming down the pike.