Hacker News Reader

Comment by leetcrew | Hacker News Reader

if you don't mind me asking, what do you actually like about the cinema experience that you can't get at home? I get that the image quality is better than the average consumer tv, but it's not prohibitively expensive to get a good home theater setup, especially if you weigh the cost against eight years worth of movie tickets + the residual value of the equipment at the end.

View on HN

Speaking for myself, I live in an apartment with thin walls and can't blast my sound as loudly as it would be in a theater.

If you had good headphones/earphones, would you no longer prefer a theater?

No, I don't particularly enjoy wearing them and avoid them to prevent causing hearing damage.

For me it's the scale. As in proper big screen.

There's only three theaters in town I really enjoy visiting and then only their main auditoriums (~700-900 seats). My favorite has (or at least until recently had) the largest THX certified auditorium[1].

If I can't get the proper big screen then indeed it's better to just watch at home.

That said, it helps that the audience here is for the most part quiet and sitting still.

[1]: http://cinematreasures.org/theaters/23154

For me, it's the fact that I'm going "out". It's somewhat of a special occasion.

Similar to the difference between going to a restaurant to eat versus just getting takeout from the same place.

A good home theater setup alone won't give you the same experience as the quality of the content delivered to cinemas is way better. It's only scantly compressed compared to what is sent over the network via streams. A single movie sent to theaters via mail can take up hundreds of gigabytes, if not more.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com