5 Ways to Redesign the Movie Theater Experience. | Hacker News Reader

5 Ways to Redesign the Movie Theater Experience.

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20 pointscbetta16 comments

How about: don't run ads (except trailers) before films. It is so obnoxious to be forced to sit through an ad before something you're paying for. Especially in a theater. If an ad on TV bothers you, you can turn off the sound or go into the next room. If an ad in a newspaper or magazine bothers you, you can cover it or turn the page. But an ad in a theater you are getting shoved in your face no matter what.

Ads have a cost. People who think they can keep sticking more and more ads on things don't realize that they're gradually making whatever it is less attractive. But eventually you cross a line.

The studios and theater owners punish the people who don't pirate films the most.

If you pay full price for a theater movie you have to sit through 15 minutes of ads and trailers.

If you pay full price for a DVD, you have to sit through the trailers (which you often can't fast forward) and a bunch of annoying FBI messages.

If you pirate the film, you see exactly what you want - a movie.

I'd say make trailers optional too. I personally don't care for them -- I generally only see movies that I've read about online or heard about from friends.

A lot of people do like trailers though -- maybe set the start time of the movie to be the actual time the movie starts, and then let people interested in the trailers come early? Or, maybe, have the trailers live up to their namesake and show them after the movie?

Maybe I'm in a minority -- do trailers bug anyone else?

A clean theatre would also be nice.

I'm interested in the advances digital cinema projection can bring. Smaller cinemas (20-50 seats) for on demand viewing of a catalog of 1,000s of films. Simply select what you want and go watch it in comfy seats with food served to your seats. Whilst your watching the 15 mins of trailers any other people can choose to also come watch the film. Then on the way out pick up a copy of the DVD..

Definitely. The economics of the thing are actually really nonsensical. A "home cinema system" of any serious quality is, at least for now, at least a thousand bucks. That buys a lotta movie tickets.

Just figured out a sixth point: re-run famous movies of yore. It's almost 100% profit on the ticket, as I understand it, and with the comfy seat + some sort of pre-movie kickoff drink, you attract fellow fans of said movie (cult movies are a plus), and you make more money on the sales.

I'd SO go to those for the movies I got in my all time top 10 list.

In Tucson, there are multiple theatres (art houses, mostly) that do this. They usually get a good showing. (I remember a midnight showing of beatlejuice that was great fun. In fact, a large group of us sat on the floor before and played duck duck goose...)

There you go. The business model sells itself purely on the idea but for the doubters in the audience there's practical proof to be found.

As I said in the article, art houses are exempt from the 'WTF is wrong with you???!???' nature of the rant. They pull creative stunts all the time. Probably because those aren't run by an oligargic chain of idiots.

In Oakland there is one also, called the Parkway and they go one step further in the comfort area, they serve real food.

I agree! I have favorite films that I have never seen shown in a movie theather and would pay a large but reasonable amount for the experience.

Who wouldn't?

Showing old films in cinemas tends not to work well. The hire of the reel is cheaper but an old film draws a smaller crowd. The cinema still has to allocate a normal sized screen to it (150-400 seats) which it could be filling with this weeks new releases instead. This may work however in combination with smaller capacity screens instead (20-50). The exception is when sequels are released. Showing spiderman 1&2 the day before 3 was released made some tidy profits

It's all about the smaller screen sizes with this business model. Let people choose what films they want at what time, let other people buy tickets, serve beer, etc.

Then again.. that's what you do with netflix.

I suppose the best way to differentiate from home is either far superior quality/comfort or to build a community around your cinema, like the Watershed [http://www.watershed.co.uk/].

I added a sixth point to the article that was kicked off by your comment. Thanks, danw!

> 3. Breaks are good

Uhmmm... no they're not! Movies are quite long as it is, last thing I need is to break a story and spend extra 15min at the theater.

Weird how everyone is commenting here, and not on our blog ;) Common thing for news.ycomb.com?

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