Two-Thirds of U.S. Adults Would Rather Wait to Watch Movies on Streaming
indiewire.com
indiewire.com
Meanwhile, home theater technology has never been better. 7.1 surround, amazing displays, you can pause, eat food that you like, and being at home is so much better in every way than being out with the savage public.
Good riddance to movie theaters.
This is the thing that kills me about theaters. They've just not kept up with display quality at all. Your normal theater projector is 1080p, digital IMAX is 2k, and laser IMAX is 4k. Eventually they'll get 8k IMAX as well but so few theaters even have laser IMAX as it is. And on top of that you are generally going to have better colors, brighter whites, and blacker blacks on a high quality panel than is achievable with all but the top of the line IMAX digital projectors.
So the way I see it, there is absolutely no technical advantage to going out to a movie theater over watching at home unless it's something uniquely special and you happen to be lucky enough to be near a theater that offers that unique advantage (ex: Oppenheimer in 70mm analog IMAX).
And like you said, the social experience of attending a theater (at least in the US) is just not great. I could see the appeal if you were watching a comedy or something like a marvel film where crowd reaction could potentially add to the film but even then it's probably not worth the exuberant cost relative to watching at home.
Maybe part of it is getting old and cranky, but it feels like the social contract is completely broken, and it's everyone for themselves. Or perhaps given the title, 1/3 of people broke it for everyone else.
I am in NYC. I went on a double date to the movie theatres for Dune 2. It was like $90 for the tickets, $35 for the pop corn and drinks, and $28 for the alcohol.
Where are you getting this family discount at?
At least at home I can rewind or put on subtitles.
But all i got was deaf ears.
It's a shame for me. It's an easy way for me to get out of the house and out of my own head for a bit and despite having a nice TV, nothing quite compares to the silver screen and it's bolstering speakers.
Which may be why he framed it like a serial drama?
The 70mm imax that Oppenheimer was filmed on is 4:3.
An old standard aspect ratio for television serials.
If you watch Oppenheimer any other way, to remove what are usually large black bars on the sides for contemporary tvs, you are watching a cropped version of the film maker’s vision.
But also, there are plenty stunning vistas in that film.
I recently went to see the Deep Sky documentary with my family at the Omnimax Theatre. Much better experience. There were people crying, the JWST images were so overwhelming.
If you can find one, it remedies most of these problems. The entrance fee is usually even reasonable, seeing as how they're generally double features.
One major reason for me is the lack of courtesy from fellow moviegoers, especially with phones. A bright smartphone screen in front of you is jarring, especially in a dark theatre, and especially with 3D movies. I've even seen people take phone calls in the theatre.
Stadium seating solves this problem as the gradient usually hides phones in front of you. I have started to either sit in the front row balcony, or stadium seating, or just refuse to go to theatres.
I was utterly baffled a working professional at this particular company could behave like this around their co-workers, thankfully no member of the general public has ever done something like that around me.
Oppenheimer was the first movie I considered going to in a long time but still did not. I am going to finally watch it Sunday. Even if I love it, I know I won't think about how much better it could have been at the movies. I will actually just be grateful it wasn't ruined for me by some negative aspect of going to the movies.
I think the fact that so many people want a good theater experience and the fact that they’re largely crap is a (current) market opportunity.
AMC has been rolling out upgraded experiences across their chain (food to seat service, reclining seats, etc), but I don’t know to what extent.
Alamo is literally the only place I'll watch a movie due to their "No, really: no using your cellphone" policy, so I'm happy to give them my business, but I draw the line at mediocre food. It's too bad and kind of ironic because they messed up their menu in a drive to greater profitablity and lost a lot of their most profitable business as a result: the margins on food and alcohol are far better than ticket sales.
The cost of keeping a variety of food offerings, and the equipment to prepare them, and the people to run all that, may simply be too high for the current levels of attendance.
I guess tastes just change. Dinner and a movie did not use to mean dinner AT the movie.
If you want a full restaurant at the movies why not also have an oil change as part of the deal? Watch the movie, all you can eat soup, salad, breadsticks with your meal and at the same time someone changes the oil in your car.
What a silly deduction. 2/3 might watch them in blu ray, or from a torrent, or from cable when and if it is aired, ppv by cable, and finally, streaming online.
Also, they don't show any serious information about the survey. It could be bogus, flawed or serious.
Pirate, comrade! Comrade pirate!
Classic HN
The big "issue" is the US itself. These kinds of things do exist in Asia and some parts of the EU and works great, because housing is tiny and basically only for eating and sleeping. The US meanwhile has more land for bigger houses and backwards thar are the subject of house gatherings.
This may be on the fall right now, so the idea ironically becomes more viable later for newer generations. but as it is there's not much incentive to rent out a large club room when you have a house to go to instead.
I hate to be “that guy” but in retrospect, that doesn’t really seem to have been a great idea during a worldwide, deadly, airborne pandemic… at least until the vaccines were widely deployed. I guess that’s what you mean by late pandemic.
The three times I’ve been to the theater since 2020 have been utter nightmares. People have forgotten how to be considerate in public. I won’t go into details but let’s just say that two of three times were really unpleasant, and the third was kind of gross, and all three were expensive and not particularly memorable.
I’ll take a cold drink and a clean comfortable chair at home with friends, and the ability to pause something for the bathroom any day.
So, no thanks.
After the movie people were complaining and I told them to ask for a refund, because I did and got one. They thanked me for finally saying something to those idiots. I don't think I went to the movie for 10 years after that horrible experience.
2024 is shaping up to be very good for movies so far, so we'll have to see how attitudes towards movie theaters evolve.
The price of snacks and drinks is what stings the most, but even there I do find the popcorn the best there is. Overall it's not an experience I can replicate at home.
The biggest change with Covid/streaming is the removal of time pressure to go to the theater. For years leading up to 2020, it seemed like the number of weeks a film was in the theater kept getting shorter, and you had to really decide to go see something in the week or three after it opened, otherwise you’d miss it, and I’m sure I missed many I would have seen. With streaming, I don’t think they’re missing out on too many ticket sales from me, but I’m definitely seeing more movies I would have missed otherwise.
Right now we really wish we had the option to watch Dune 2 at home. My FIL is staying with us this week and we're all excited about seeing Dune 2, but my wife is in the middle of chemo and had to miss last week's treatment because her white blood cell count was really low. We don't really want to go to the theater and possibly expose her to illness.