4 ms·

I don't know if there's enough people out there like me, but I'd love a smaller theater with traditional seats and decent sound if it was at a reasonable price.

I don't know if there's enough people out there like me, but I'd love a smaller theater with traditional seats and decent sound if it was at a reasonable price. After searching out the best and biggest screens and audio, I've slowly realized that stuff doesn't affect my enjoyment that much. What does affect my enjoyment is the bill for bringing a small family making me limit the affair to once or twice a year. There are a handful of these discount theaters around and they seem to be popular, but for me require a much longer drive. Seems like an intractable problem. Because if they followed my advice, maybe they'd lose the crowd of people who have expensive setups at home. I'm not so sure they get much revenue from that crowd anyway, however. Presumably they know their customers better than I do.

fauxpause_ 3y ago
There are not enough people like you. Like 5% of movie theater seats get sold. The only way to be profitable is to be able to sell out the popular films.
ljf 3y ago
I have to really work to get my kids to want to go to the cinema - they aren't (yet) wow'd by a movie being out 'sooner' than we can see it on netflix or similar, and the experience for them is just better at home. I love a great cinema trip, but we barely go once as year, as our at home set up scratches the itch. --- I have a purely 'ok' set up at home - more involved than some peoples, but nothing fancy: In my living room I have a 120" diagonal screen (£30 from amazon) that we manually pull down the 12 to 24 times a year we use it. I have a schools short throw hd projector that was £70 delivered from ebay and then a set of £15 (2nd hand) pc speakers that are a sub and 2 speakers - all running off a 1st gen chromecast. In my shed I have a marginally better set up of a mechanised screen (£70), then a more recent chromecast running to an hdmi splitter with optical audio out, which goes into a year 2007 5.1 sony amp (£30), with another schools projector (£130) - this set up came to about £250 all in. If you have the room to keep the bits, I highly recommend a similar cheap set up - you can obviously spend loads more, but our cheapo living room set up does us proud and the audio is more than good enough for kids films. Means we enjoy loads of films as a family.
- cjrp 3y ago
  Out of interest, what sort of distance do you need from projector to screen in order to get a decently sized/focused picture?
  - ljf 3y ago
    Barely anything, just measured the BENQ projector in the shed - the front of the projector is 65cm from the screen, and the rear (where the mirror is) is 91cm from the screen. In the shed it is ceiling mounted so just the mirror is visible as I have it built into the roof (with some fans for cooling). In the living room the similar projector just sits on the floor a similar distance. We sit at the other end of the room, so further away from the fan noise (not that there is much, esp in eco mode.)
- atlasunshrugged 3y ago
  That sounds fantastic, have you looked into how to actually get access to new films though? I'd love to also set up some community theater and mainly do cinema classics, but it would be cool to also be able to show the less popular (ie not Avengers 6 or Fast and Furious 12) movies that are in theaters too, but I couldn't figure out how to get into the theatrical distribution after half a day of googling
ubermonkey 3y ago
How much the better tech matters is something that I find is film dependent. A big, splashy, large-scale action film? Yeah, it makes a difference to me. OTOH even apparently "thinky" films like the upcoming OPPENHEIMER are likely better in a more immersive situation. But a smaller film like THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN? Not a factor. (But this also means I don't think you lose much watching it at home if you have a decent screen.)
vidanay 3y ago
Back in the 80's as broke teenagers, we would always go to "third run" theaters. These were almost always theaters that saw their hey-day back in the 60's, but they would play six month old blockbusters for only $1.50 a ticket.
- germinalphrase 3y ago
  We had a theater like this in my home town. It was amazing. I’m even a touch nostalgic for the clearly scratched up 35mm prints.
PaulHoule 3y ago
Also after COVID-19 I've got little tolerance for popcorn messes. I know they say they need the concession stand to be profitable but if don't delete it I will "go home" instead of "going big".

fauxpause_ 3y ago

There are not enough people like you. Like 5% of movie theater seats get sold. The only way to be profitable is to be able to sell out the popular films.

ljf 3y ago

I have to really work to get my kids to want to go to the cinema - they aren't (yet) wow'd by a movie being out 'sooner' than we can see it on netflix or similar, and the experience for them is just better at home. I love a great cinema trip, but we barely go once as year, as our at home set up scratches the itch. --- I have a purely 'ok' set up at home - more involved than some peoples, but nothing fancy: In my living room I have a 120" diagonal screen (£30 from amazon) that we manually pull down the 12 to 24 times a year we use it. I have a schools short throw hd projector that was £70 delivered from ebay and then a set of £15 (2nd hand) pc speakers that are a sub and 2 speakers - all running off a 1st gen chromecast. In my shed I have a marginally better set up of a mechanised screen (£70), then a more recent chromecast running to an hdmi splitter with optical audio out, which goes into a year 2007 5.1 sony amp (£30), with another schools projector (£130) - this set up came to about £250 all in. If you have the room to keep the bits, I highly recommend a similar cheap set up - you can obviously spend loads more, but our cheapo living room set up does us proud and the audio is more than good enough for kids films. Means we enjoy loads of films as a family.

cjrp 3y ago
Out of interest, what sort of distance do you need from projector to screen in order to get a decently sized/focused picture?
- ljf 3y ago
  Barely anything, just measured the BENQ projector in the shed - the front of the projector is 65cm from the screen, and the rear (where the mirror is) is 91cm from the screen. In the shed it is ceiling mounted so just the mirror is visible as I have it built into the roof (with some fans for cooling). In the living room the similar projector just sits on the floor a similar distance. We sit at the other end of the room, so further away from the fan noise (not that there is much, esp in eco mode.)
atlasunshrugged 3y ago
That sounds fantastic, have you looked into how to actually get access to new films though? I'd love to also set up some community theater and mainly do cinema classics, but it would be cool to also be able to show the less popular (ie not Avengers 6 or Fast and Furious 12) movies that are in theaters too, but I couldn't figure out how to get into the theatrical distribution after half a day of googling

ubermonkey 3y ago

How much the better tech matters is something that I find is film dependent. A big, splashy, large-scale action film? Yeah, it makes a difference to me. OTOH even apparently "thinky" films like the upcoming OPPENHEIMER are likely better in a more immersive situation. But a smaller film like THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN? Not a factor. (But this also means I don't think you lose much watching it at home if you have a decent screen.)

vidanay 3y ago

Back in the 80's as broke teenagers, we would always go to "third run" theaters. These were almost always theaters that saw their hey-day back in the 60's, but they would play six month old blockbusters for only $1.50 a ticket.

germinalphrase 3y ago
We had a theater like this in my home town. It was amazing. I’m even a touch nostalgic for the clearly scratched up 35mm prints.

PaulHoule 3y ago

Also after COVID-19 I've got little tolerance for popcorn messes. I know they say they need the concession stand to be profitable but if don't delete it I will "go home" instead of "going big".