As nice as it is to have the Daily Show back on Hulu, the latest announcement from the online video site not only has us excited, it has us actually contemplating spending $7.99-per-month on the Hulu Plus service. Why? Because it is now home to the Criterion Collection. Currently the site boasts 150 Criterion flicks, but that number should soon swell to include nearly their entire library—so the next time you've got a hankering for some Fellini, Kurosawa or Truffaut, you won't even have to leave your computer. Of course, this being the ultimate film snob collection going online, not everyone is jumping for joy the way we are.
The first comment on the Criterion announcement sums up the contrarian side nicely. While cinephiles are happy for "the ADD crowd," they don't understand how someone would prefer to watch these classics of film on "an inferior compressed streaming format." To which we say: cash and convenience. Paying $7.99-a-month to access a collection this good (plus, uh, Family Guy) instead of paying twenty bucks for one (perfectly mastered) DVD is a no-brainer. But then again, we still regularly watch movies on our trusty old VHS and get our television signal over the air.
Your move, Netflix Watch Instantly! Though we do like this new, presumably unaffiliated, Twitter feed that lists when movies will no longer be available on demand.
