It's still streaming quality- I have a 360 with instant streaming and there is a very noticable difference btw. the DVD's and streaming. First, and this doesn't apply to every Criterion but a lot are in 5.1 sound which Netflix instant watch doesn't support because of the codecs. Second, streaming quality is almost always going to be a degradation of the original source. It is cool that all these movies are available to just watch, but one of the big reasons you get Criterions is for the quality of the audio and video and a lot of that is lost in the transfer to a different streaming codec.
