Criterion?

[JadedRaverLA]

Originally Posted by fettastic

They aren't always "the best and the brightest". Heck they were one of the last companies to embrace anamorphic widescreen, but that didn't stop them from charging the most for everything.

They also absolutely refuse to remix audio, hence why so many of their releases only have 1.0 mono sound.

To each their own. I agree on the anamorphic DVD bit, though they long argued (and some outside experts agreed early on) that trusting a DVD player to reformat the video internally was not a great plan, and that they would rather make sure the AR was kept correct, etc. by not using anamorphic processing. Of course, as 16:9 TVs became the standard, that became a problem with their early releases, and I'm sure that if they had it to do over they would have gone anamorphic from the beginning. But their inability to read the future HDTV market shouldn't be held so severely against them.

And I'm 100% on board not remixing the audio. It drives me crazy when classics are released by major studios without any attempt to keep the original audio. Others (obviously including yourself) disagree, but again, there are those who appreciate (and want) the original track.

To each their own, though. Criterion is a line geared for a niche customer, If you don't fit that niche then it isn't for you. If you fit that niche, though, they are terrific. (And you still have to give them credit for essentially creating the "special edition," offering director or DP approved transfer, director's commentary, etc. even if you don't care for other aspects of their product.)

As for the OP, giving a full history of the company would take forever so I'll just post the obvious Wiki-link: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criterion_collection . I didn't notice anything really incorrect on a quick look just now, so that's probably a good starting point if nothing else.