5 ms·

As someone who has loved going to see "classic" movies in the theater, it's a different experience than watching them at home. I'm not going to the theater bec

by cbanek 7y ago

As someone who has loved going to see "classic" movies in the theater, it's a different experience than watching them at home. I'm not going to the theater because I don't have the movie, but because I want to see it on the big screen, with other people, and get that movie experience. For movies that came out before my time, it's been amazing. For example, I've seen Wrath of Khan so many times at home, but it was nowhere as good as seeing it on the big screen. I wonder what the numbers say on how many people won't buy a movie or stream it just because their theater decides to show it (and usually it's a very short run, like a one night or weekend).

Mediterraneo10 7y ago
Have you ever considered simply buying an HD/4K projector, a decent-quality screen, and a surround-sound setup? If you have a good-sized living room, then the resulting experience is so comparable to a cinema that I personally have never felt inclined to pay for a film at the cinema for the seven years now that I have owned this home setup. Yes, you won't be able to watch it with a set of strangers around you, but I imagine many people would consider that a downside of the cinema, not a plus.
- JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
  I had all of that in my last place (quite hackily assembled). Honestly though you'll still have issues with the walls reflecting to much light and stuff like that. HOWEVER, the major downside in comparison to a cinema is that there's nothing stopping me from pulling out my phone, or keeping my notifications on, or pausing it to go do something else. The level of immersion in a difficult to watch film can be totally destroyed (e.g. good luck trying to sit through the Turin Horse in your living room, the mood of the film will be totally destroyed by a few pauses).
  - commoner 7y ago
    That downside can be resolved by turning your phone off or putting it in another room while the film is playing.
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    As someone who has watched The Turin Horse on his home cinema about once a year since it came out (glad to see another Tarr fan here on HN), I have never had to pause and ruin the mood. I definitely understand what you mean when you say phones can be a distraction, but then why not just leave your phone in the kitchen or bedroom for the time you are watching the film? The walls won’t reflect too much light if you take adequate measures so that they are not pure white and uncovered. For me, the challenge of setting up the home cinema was not the reflecting light of the walls, inasmuch as they could be covered with bookshelves. Rather, it was the acoustics when I have large windows in the room – I could cover them with Ikea’s fully opaque curtains so that light isn’t a problem, but the glass of the windowpanes still has a detrimental effect on the sound.
    - JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
      My point is that a lot of people may not even be aware that that's a benefit they get from a cinema. If you're not neurotic enough to notice how much your regular distractions can take away from a film you're going to get a better experience from a theatrical viewing without fully even knowing how and all the gear in the world isn't going to make up for a lack of discipline. In my case, I've a timed lock I put my phone away with ("just stop doing it" doesn't really work with me, 100% addicted) when I watch a film I actually want to pay attention to at home. No way my attention span could handle something like Bela Tarr at home (I'm a fidgety unfocused person and always have been), but for the most part it done the job. RE: the space, it's hard to get a good setup with rented accommodation, or small accommodation (currently in a studio apartment). I'm sure I'll eventually have a place where I can set up an amazing system.
    - JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
      super envious of your setup btw! I'll love setting up that kind of thing whenever I get a chance. My current apartment has woodchip wallpaper and nowhere to hang a screen from, so I'm hacking together ~80inch screen project (have an old bed frame I chopped up and repurposed as a room divider that I'm gonna add a roller blind and curtains onto that I'm pretty sure will kind of work...)
  - chongli 7y ago
    the major downside in comparison to a cinema is that there's nothing stopping me from pulling out my phone That doesn’t seem to stop the people I’ve seen at the cinema, tapping away on their phones for the entire movie. I would love to go to a movie theatre that is: 1) tastefully decorated like an old-timey cinema and spotlessly clean 2) reasonably priced, both in food and ticket prices, so that families can afford to go 3) strict in its policies of restricting technology (no phone use in the theatre whatsoever) and mandating parental accompaniment for children 4) offers both healthy snacks and classic ones like popcorn, and does not use any fake butter or garbage like that
    - Jamwinner 7y ago
      I have never been to a theater that would not swiftly eject anyone disturbing the movie in the united states. Where exactly do you see films? Are you not reporting it and expecting things to magically be resolved?
      - throwaway9980 7y ago
        I think if you’re going to see “films” this is not a problem. If you’re going to the movies that the average person is seeing at the average mega theater, it’s a different story. Where I live it’s extremely common for people to text message during movies and even answer their phone and chat with some friend about the movie they are seeing. If you were going to try to get all these people kicked out you would be spending most of the movie going back and forth complaining to management. Not really worth going in the first place.
- jbay808 7y ago
  Many of us don't have good-sized living rooms in which we're permitted to host guests.
- CydeWeys 7y ago
  I live in Manhattan, so I at least don't have anything close to the space required for this (not would my adjacent neighbors appreciate the sound setup). I expect this is true of most tech workers on here who've been drawn to cities like SF or NYC by top salaries. Fortunately there is a theater near me in the East Village that sometimes shows older stuff, and I saw 2001 in 70mm there and it was awesome.
  - george_ciobanu 7y ago
    I used to live in a studio (high ceilings) in Chelsea, Manhattan. I paid 500 for a projector and you can use almost any speaker. You can get a good one for 500 these days. So the whole cost is 1000. The speaker need not be very loud and one empty wall (or a white screen) is all you need. The image was amazing and the size huge. The projector was in my bookcase, on one of the shelves. Sometimes I'd get lazy and use the projector speakers and it was fine. The projector-wall distance was no more than 5m. A short throw projector can work with even less distance. So absolutely doable in a small space. I'm never going back to a regular TV.
- acollins1331 7y ago
  You just described something that costs thousands of dollars to set up and thousands of dollars of added rent. Or we could just go to the movie theatre every couple weeks. Hmm
  - Mediterraneo10 7y ago
    > You just described something that costs thousands of dollars to set up and thousands of dollars of added rent The cost of projectors and surround-sound speakers has dropped so significantly in the last decade (and you can use a Raspberry Pi as your media center) that I suspect it is within a lot of people’s means here and that this audience has splurged on other high-end electronics from time to time. I mean, I live in Eastern Europe on a local middle-class salary, and my setup was still achievable after a few months’ saving up. Definitely, the real limitation to this setup is whether one can rent or own a standalone home. As the other person mentions, this is not an easy option for that portion of the HN readership who has moved to NY or SF. But for cinephiles elsewhere, they ought to think about such a setup and see whether they could make it happen.
    - tomhoward 7y ago
      It's still not really the point though. Yes, I have a decent home theatre, and my partner and I enjoy watching shows and movies on it most nights we're home. But going to a beautiful old cinema to watch a classic movie on a huge screen, is a whole different experience, and one that most movie enthusiasts relish from time to time, regardless of what setup they have at home. No matter how affordable/practical it is to build a home theatre for many of us here, it still won't be for many people, and we can still find it sad that the ability to experience old movies in the kinds of theatres where they were originally shown is being wound back by changing corporate interests.
  - Retric 7y ago
    Basic 4K projectors are down to 1,000$, you can add a screen and surround sound for another 500$. Assuming you would watch any other video like Sports, Netflix, or YouTube it’s a significant upgrade for both. As to space, you can put your collapsible screen in front of bookshelves, windows, doors etc So they take up less useful space than a large TV.
- teh_klev 7y ago
  > Have you ever considered simply buying an HD/4K projector, a decent-quality screen, and a surround-sound setup? I think you're missing the point. I have a fairly decent home cinema setup and rarely go to the cinema but there are some films that deserve viewing on the big screen. For me these are films such as Casablanca, Apocalypse Now, Alien, 2001:A Space Odyssey, Star Wars (original), Close Encounters. These were movies made where the "cinematography" had the cinema in mind, not a home cinema system (because they basically didn't exist unless you were extremely well off). Seeing these films in the cinema is, for me anyway, a genuinely different experience.
- arh68 7y ago
  Last movie I saw in theaters was a markedly worse image than what I get at home: overly dark (2D->3D lens?), yet still some scenes washed out to white. My 1080p DLP projector onto a 10' white vinyl screen seated ~5' away is better than any picture I've paid for in the last 5 years. Though, I haven't seen an IMAX in a long time: the sheer field-of-view and bulb intensity are unmatchable in my house. Audio at the theater was better, but I haven't invested much beyond a 2.0 setup. At $11/ticket (pretty normal around here), the break-even point is ~200 movies. You have to B-Y-O-BluRay but at least you can rewatch those for free. EDIT: oh and I don't have to smell buttery nacho cheese from the person sitting next to me, and fight over the cupholder

by cbanek 7y ago

Mediterraneo10 7y ago

Have you ever considered simply buying an HD/4K projector, a decent-quality screen, and a surround-sound setup? If you have a good-sized living room, then the resulting experience is so comparable to a cinema that I personally have never felt inclined to pay for a film at the cinema for the seven years now that I have owned this home setup. Yes, you won't be able to watch it with a set of strangers around you, but I imagine many people would consider that a downside of the cinema, not a plus.

JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
I had all of that in my last place (quite hackily assembled). Honestly though you'll still have issues with the walls reflecting to much light and stuff like that. HOWEVER, the major downside in comparison to a cinema is that there's nothing stopping me from pulling out my phone, or keeping my notifications on, or pausing it to go do something else. The level of immersion in a difficult to watch film can be totally destroyed (e.g. good luck trying to sit through the Turin Horse in your living room, the mood of the film will be totally destroyed by a few pauses).
- commoner 7y ago
  That downside can be resolved by turning your phone off or putting it in another room while the film is playing.
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  As someone who has watched The Turin Horse on his home cinema about once a year since it came out (glad to see another Tarr fan here on HN), I have never had to pause and ruin the mood. I definitely understand what you mean when you say phones can be a distraction, but then why not just leave your phone in the kitchen or bedroom for the time you are watching the film? The walls won’t reflect too much light if you take adequate measures so that they are not pure white and uncovered. For me, the challenge of setting up the home cinema was not the reflecting light of the walls, inasmuch as they could be covered with bookshelves. Rather, it was the acoustics when I have large windows in the room – I could cover them with Ikea’s fully opaque curtains so that light isn’t a problem, but the glass of the windowpanes still has a detrimental effect on the sound.
  - JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
    My point is that a lot of people may not even be aware that that's a benefit they get from a cinema. If you're not neurotic enough to notice how much your regular distractions can take away from a film you're going to get a better experience from a theatrical viewing without fully even knowing how and all the gear in the world isn't going to make up for a lack of discipline. In my case, I've a timed lock I put my phone away with ("just stop doing it" doesn't really work with me, 100% addicted) when I watch a film I actually want to pay attention to at home. No way my attention span could handle something like Bela Tarr at home (I'm a fidgety unfocused person and always have been), but for the most part it done the job. RE: the space, it's hard to get a good setup with rented accommodation, or small accommodation (currently in a studio apartment). I'm sure I'll eventually have a place where I can set up an amazing system.
  - JansjoFromIkea 7y ago
    super envious of your setup btw! I'll love setting up that kind of thing whenever I get a chance. My current apartment has woodchip wallpaper and nowhere to hang a screen from, so I'm hacking together ~80inch screen project (have an old bed frame I chopped up and repurposed as a room divider that I'm gonna add a roller blind and curtains onto that I'm pretty sure will kind of work...)
- chongli 7y ago
  the major downside in comparison to a cinema is that there's nothing stopping me from pulling out my phone That doesn’t seem to stop the people I’ve seen at the cinema, tapping away on their phones for the entire movie. I would love to go to a movie theatre that is: 1) tastefully decorated like an old-timey cinema and spotlessly clean 2) reasonably priced, both in food and ticket prices, so that families can afford to go 3) strict in its policies of restricting technology (no phone use in the theatre whatsoever) and mandating parental accompaniment for children 4) offers both healthy snacks and classic ones like popcorn, and does not use any fake butter or garbage like that
  - Jamwinner 7y ago
    I have never been to a theater that would not swiftly eject anyone disturbing the movie in the united states. Where exactly do you see films? Are you not reporting it and expecting things to magically be resolved?
    - throwaway9980 7y ago
      I think if you’re going to see “films” this is not a problem. If you’re going to the movies that the average person is seeing at the average mega theater, it’s a different story. Where I live it’s extremely common for people to text message during movies and even answer their phone and chat with some friend about the movie they are seeing. If you were going to try to get all these people kicked out you would be spending most of the movie going back and forth complaining to management. Not really worth going in the first place.
jbay808 7y ago
Many of us don't have good-sized living rooms in which we're permitted to host guests.
CydeWeys 7y ago
I live in Manhattan, so I at least don't have anything close to the space required for this (not would my adjacent neighbors appreciate the sound setup). I expect this is true of most tech workers on here who've been drawn to cities like SF or NYC by top salaries. Fortunately there is a theater near me in the East Village that sometimes shows older stuff, and I saw 2001 in 70mm there and it was awesome.
- george_ciobanu 7y ago
  I used to live in a studio (high ceilings) in Chelsea, Manhattan. I paid 500 for a projector and you can use almost any speaker. You can get a good one for 500 these days. So the whole cost is 1000. The speaker need not be very loud and one empty wall (or a white screen) is all you need. The image was amazing and the size huge. The projector was in my bookcase, on one of the shelves. Sometimes I'd get lazy and use the projector speakers and it was fine. The projector-wall distance was no more than 5m. A short throw projector can work with even less distance. So absolutely doable in a small space. I'm never going back to a regular TV.
acollins1331 7y ago
You just described something that costs thousands of dollars to set up and thousands of dollars of added rent. Or we could just go to the movie theatre every couple weeks. Hmm
- Mediterraneo10 7y ago
  > You just described something that costs thousands of dollars to set up and thousands of dollars of added rent The cost of projectors and surround-sound speakers has dropped so significantly in the last decade (and you can use a Raspberry Pi as your media center) that I suspect it is within a lot of people’s means here and that this audience has splurged on other high-end electronics from time to time. I mean, I live in Eastern Europe on a local middle-class salary, and my setup was still achievable after a few months’ saving up. Definitely, the real limitation to this setup is whether one can rent or own a standalone home. As the other person mentions, this is not an easy option for that portion of the HN readership who has moved to NY or SF. But for cinephiles elsewhere, they ought to think about such a setup and see whether they could make it happen.
  - tomhoward 7y ago
    It's still not really the point though. Yes, I have a decent home theatre, and my partner and I enjoy watching shows and movies on it most nights we're home. But going to a beautiful old cinema to watch a classic movie on a huge screen, is a whole different experience, and one that most movie enthusiasts relish from time to time, regardless of what setup they have at home. No matter how affordable/practical it is to build a home theatre for many of us here, it still won't be for many people, and we can still find it sad that the ability to experience old movies in the kinds of theatres where they were originally shown is being wound back by changing corporate interests.
- Retric 7y ago
  Basic 4K projectors are down to 1,000$, you can add a screen and surround sound for another 500$. Assuming you would watch any other video like Sports, Netflix, or YouTube it’s a significant upgrade for both. As to space, you can put your collapsible screen in front of bookshelves, windows, doors etc So they take up less useful space than a large TV.
teh_klev 7y ago
> Have you ever considered simply buying an HD/4K projector, a decent-quality screen, and a surround-sound setup? I think you're missing the point. I have a fairly decent home cinema setup and rarely go to the cinema but there are some films that deserve viewing on the big screen. For me these are films such as Casablanca, Apocalypse Now, Alien, 2001:A Space Odyssey, Star Wars (original), Close Encounters. These were movies made where the "cinematography" had the cinema in mind, not a home cinema system (because they basically didn't exist unless you were extremely well off). Seeing these films in the cinema is, for me anyway, a genuinely different experience.
arh68 7y ago
Last movie I saw in theaters was a markedly worse image than what I get at home: overly dark (2D->3D lens?), yet still some scenes washed out to white. My 1080p DLP projector onto a 10' white vinyl screen seated ~5' away is better than any picture I've paid for in the last 5 years. Though, I haven't seen an IMAX in a long time: the sheer field-of-view and bulb intensity are unmatchable in my house. Audio at the theater was better, but I haven't invested much beyond a 2.0 setup. At $11/ticket (pretty normal around here), the break-even point is ~200 movies. You have to B-Y-O-BluRay but at least you can rewatch those for free. EDIT: oh and I don't have to smell buttery nacho cheese from the person sitting next to me, and fight over the cupholder