The Criterion Collection, Explained: What It Is and How It Works

The Criterion Collection is a home-video publisher, founded in 1984, that releases classic and contemporary films with restored transfers and extensive supplements; it numbers more than 1,000 spine-numbered editions and operates the Criterion Channel, a subscription streaming service launched in 2019. Its spine numbers, clean design, and deep special features made it the reference point for serious home viewing. This explainer covers what the label is, how it chooses and licenses films, and what it costs to follow.

This is an explainer of a company and its practices from the public record. Availability and pricing change; the label's own site is the source of record.

Where Did the Criterion Collection Come From?

Criterion began in 1984 as a LaserDisc label — the twelve-inch shiny discs that predated DVD — and its early releases established practices the whole industry later copied: letterboxed widescreen transfers when pan-and-scan was standard, and the first audio commentaries, beginning with a commentary track on the original King Kong (1933) recorded with film historian Ronald Haver. Through the 1990s Criterion moved through LaserDisc's decline into DVD, where its editions of foreign and Hollywood classics, plus then-current titles, defined the premium end of the format. Since 1999 the company has been owned by Janus Films's shareholders, connecting the label to the art-house distributor that has handled many of the same titles since the 1950s; in 2024 the production company A24 announced a partnership giving Criterion U.S. home-video and streaming rights to its library.

What Actually Goes Into a Criterion Edition?

The spine numbers run sequentially — the first, Grand Illusion (1937), appeared in 1984; by the mid-2020s the count passed 1,200. Each edition is built around three elements. The transfer: new or licensed restorations, scanned from the best surviving elements, with color and audio work supervised where possible. The supplements: essays inserted in booklets, interviews, documentaries, deleted scenes, and multiple commentaries — the layer that film studies programs and archives contributed to over decades. And the packaging: the standardized design with spine number, which collectors organize their shelves around. Editions get retired when licenses lapse, which is why the secondary market for out-of-print Criterion titles is active and often expensive.

How Does Criterion Choose Its Films?

By license availability and editorial judgment together. The label does not own most of what it publishes — it licenses rights from studios and independent rights holders for fixed terms, which is why titles disappear and return. Its curatorial range is unusually wide: established world-cinema directors (Kurosawa, Bergman, Fellini each have large swaths of their filmographies in the collection), Hollywood studio classics, independent American film, documentaries, and contemporary international titles. The Eclipse series, started in 2007, packages lesser-known films in no-frills sets at lower cost. The Criterion Collection's own statements describe selection as an argument — a case that a film matters — rather than a ranking.

What Is the Criterion Channel?

The streaming service launched in February 2019 as a standalone subscription, after an earlier partnership ended when FilmStruck, the Turner-run service carrying Criterion titles, shut down in 2018 — a closure that prompted enough public protest that Criterion went independent with its own platform. The Channel runs most of the collection plus licensed programming that rotates monthly, organized around director retrospectives, genres, and themed series with programmed notes. It is separate from the disc business: titles stream on license and rotate, so the Channel is a curated library rather than a permanent one. Pricing has held in the ten-to-eleven-dollar monthly range since launch, with an annual option; current figures are on the service's own site.

Do You Need Blu-ray and 4K Discs to Care About Criterion?

No, but the disc editions are where the label's restoration work is most durable. Criterion releases on Blu-ray and, since 2021, on 4K UHD, often debuting restorations that later circulate theatrically and on streaming. For viewers without a player, the Channel and the label's digital retail partners carry many of the same films. The collector side of the culture — half-price sales, the Barnes & Noble seasonal sales that have run for years, and July's annual flash sale — is real but optional; the sales are simply when the standard editions cost least.

Why Does Criterion Matter to Film Culture?

Three reasons from the record. Its restorations set technical standards that other labels followed — the commentaries, the supplements, the careful sourcing of elements became the boutique-label template replicated by Arrow, Kino Lorber and others. Its canon-shaping is real: a Criterion edition functions as an institutional signal that a film deserves sustained attention, and film studies courses cite the supplements. And its archive value compounds: the label's transfers and interviews are now primary sources for film history themselves. The Library of Congress and university collections hold Criterion editions as reference copies, a small indicator of how the label crossed from retail into the preservation record.

How Do You Start With Criterion Cheaply?

Practical routes, from the record. Subscribe to the Criterion Channel for a month and watch through a director's series before buying anything. Buy during the two annual Barnes & Noble sales (roughly November and July) or Criterion's own flash sales, when standard editions are half price. Check the secondary market for out-of-print titles you specifically want, since reissues are never guaranteed. And note the region coding: U.S. releases are Region A Blu-ray; the label has separately announced international licensing arrangements, so availability outside North America differs by title.