One of the most famous twists in film and television history comes at the end of a Twilight Zone episode titled “Time Enough at Last.” A henpecked nebbish manages to survive the apocalypse in a library, surrounded by all the books he never had the bandwidth to read before—only to immediately shatter his Coke bottle-thick eyeglasses.
This cruelly ironic fate captures with cinematic flair the high drama of subscribing to the Criterion Channel—the world’s best streaming library, and one of its worst streaming apps.
Just when you think it’s the perfect moment to finally watch The Night of the Hunter for the first time—whoops, the app doesn’t work on your TV.
For those who may not be cinemaniacs, the Criterion Collection is a film distribution company that preserves historically relevant films with high-quality restorations, and honors other notable works by inducting them into its rarified canon. Following the 2018 collapse of highbrow subscription streamer FilmStruck, then home to many Criterion offerings, the company launched its own service, the Criterion Channel, the following year.
While it doesn’t always have every single Criterion-blessed film on tap, what the Criterion Channel has is a profoundly deep bench of stone-cold classics, deep cuts, world cinema standouts, and offbeat new releases. It’s entirely possible to save untold thousands on film school tuition as a Criterion subscriber just by mainlining the most heralded works in cinema history and listening to director commentary tracks and other supplemental materials that demystify the craft that went into making them.
Unfortunately, the Criterion Channel has a tech and product-maintenance problem that stands in stark contrast to the quality of its programming. And as rival streamers focus on churning out original (read: often bad) content rather than amassing the best movies ever made, it may be squandering a golden opportunity.
Stand by for technical difficulties
At this moment, a good many subscribers with Samsung TVs have been unable to access the app on their TVs for months. The problem began on September 24, when the Criterion Channel rolled out a major overhaul of its streaming platform, which Samsung smart TV users proved unable to access. The next day, Criterion acknowledged that a replacement Samsung app was under review and promised it would be ready in the coming days; in the meantime, customers could watch through a browser or other streaming devices.
The problem dragged on, though. Samsung owners with subscriptions reported that the outage continued through October, with the company vowing to provide an eventual updated app compatible with Samsung TVs.
Samsung operates its own smart-TV system called Tizen, so streaming services need to develop compatible apps, test them across TV models, and submit updates for Samsung’s certification. Major streamers like Netflix and Hulu tend to have ongoing engineering and distribution relationships with TV manufacturers to manage that process, and so does Criterion, presumably. In any case, the precise technical cause of the Criterion Channel outage for Samsung users after the recent update remains undisclosed, but it may come down to an issue around compatibility testing or release coordination.
Asked about this outage, a spokesperson for the Criterion Channel tells Fast Company, “We’re happy to share that the new version of the Criterion Channel app is now live on the vast majority of Samsung smart TVs.”
Remaining supported Samsung models are currently undergoing the company’s app review process and should receive the update soon. The spokesperson attributes the delay to Samsung’s review and publishing procedures, which are outside Criterion’s control and have taken longer than anticipated.
This isn’t the first time, however, that Criterion Channel subscribers have had technical issues. It’s not even the first time for Samsung owners, specifically. (Samsung did not immediately respond to Fast Company’s request for comment.)
In January 2025, an update reportedly caused the app to crash on Samsung smart TVs whenever users tried to play a film. Some subscribers could still watch Criterion 24/7—a continuous livestream of curated films the Criterion Channel offers—but choosing any individual movie caused the app to quit. While the compatibility issue was largely resolved by March 2025, some users reported the bug continued long afterward.
Unfortunately, the streamer has been plagued with similar issues practically from the start.
A little backstory
In April 2019, not long after the service launched, a Gizmodo writer spent a week with the Criterion Channel, concluding that its fantastic film library was hampered by subpar tech.
Chronicling some of the service’s glitches, the author wrote: “Tokyo Drifter cut off five minutes early for no real reason, Stalker and Paths of Glory both obstructed their final minutes with an error code overlay. (The films played unabated in the background, albeit with a huge ‘COULD NOT PLAY VIDEO’ window over the center of the frame.) At work, it spat back the message ‘Sorry, this video cannot be played while your device is connected to this external monitor.’”
Any new streaming service might encounter early issues while stumbling out of the gate, but some of the problems have proven persistent for the Criterion Channel, which as a matter of principle declines to share revenue figures or employee count. (Online data aggregators estimate the company has around 100 employees, and the market intelligence firm Kona Equity estimates annual revenues in the low seven figures.)
The user interface remains awkward, for instance, with film descriptions truncated, requiring an additional click on an encircled “i” for “information” in order to read them. The video player has been known to sometimes get stuck buffering and freezing. Users have complained about the difficulty of logging in on Roku devices or the Apple TV app, and some subscribers have been subjected to frequent forced logins. When I mentioned to a movie podcaster friend that I was writing about the Criterion Channel’s tech issues, he complained that the app doesn’t work with his LG OLED TV, and that he has to use his phone app to play movies on it.
A quick search online revealed other people had similar issues with their LG TVs.
Why do these issues keep coming up? It probably has something to do with the fact that the Criterion Channel is a relatively small, boutique streaming service, and it’s competing with platforms backed by tech giants like Apple and Amazon, not to mention Netflix, which has the resources to ensure a seamless browsing and viewing experience. With presumably much less money and staff to devote to testing and maintenance, it becomes much harder to maintain reliable usage across Samsung, Roku, Apple TV, and all the web browsers.
It’s understandable that the Criterion Channel has not grown enough in just seven years for its tech to stand shoulder to shoulder with industry leaders. It’s also a shame—especially right now.
While the iron is hot
If ever there was a moment for the Criterion Channel to explode in growth and become a major player in the streaming wars, it’s this one.
Netflix is bleeding relevance, with viewers seemingly unengaged by disposable small-screen blockbusters starring Chris Evans. Streaming’s undisputed titan spends the majority of its content budget on original films, rather than fortifying its library with, say, widely acclaimed arthouse fare and more works from cinematic masters. There is definitely an open lane right now for a scrappy alternative dedicated to arty movies from master directors.
Which streamer is better suited to the task than the Criterion Channel? It’s certainly got the goods. Whichever entries from the massive Criterion Collection are absent on the streaming service any given month might rotate back in the following month, in one of its impeccably curated, themed collections. (Recent examples include “Rock Biopics That Don’t Suck,” “Starring Harry Dean Stanton,” and “Yearning,” the last of which you’d better believe includes a pristine print of Wong Kar-Wai’s In the Mood for Love.)
Meanwhile, the Criterion brand has never been hotter. The company has recently been riding a late-digital-era appreciation of physical media to high sales, its merch has become a marker of good taste, and celebrities like Charli XCX and Bowen Yang are lining up to get inside the ever-viral “Criterion Closet.” As more and more Criterion fans get funneled into the brand’s streaming service, the Criterion Channel has an opportunity to distinguish itself as the must-have app for serious movie-lovers and those who aspire to be one.
But it would help if those fans consistently enjoyed their experience once they got there.