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Home theater killed the multiplex
December 22nd, 2005
This will start out as a rant of my recent movie-going incident, but will lead to something I’ve felt strongly about for a while now.
Last weekend, when going to see King Kong with my family and a couple of friends at the local Harkins theaters, our ‘movie experience’ was less than enjoyable when the sound wasn’t working as it should. The right side speakers weren’t working at all except for the screen speaker. Nobody else seemed to notice, but as soon as the movie started my dad pointed it out. Despite the fact that it annoyed my dad and I throughout the movie, we ended up not saying anything about it. We knew that the theater would’ve just given us tickets for another showing and we didn’t want to go throught that additional hassle after we already spent enough time getting tickets ahead of time and waiting until this showing started. Not to mention finding the right seats, getting refreshments and the fact that my brother and decided to invite our friends.
This is just another example of how the quality of movie theaters is continuing to get worse even though the cost of tickets is going up. I don’t know about you, but whenever I go out to a movie I always seem to find something that annoys me to the point of not having wanted to go in the first place. Whether its the stench of too much popcorn butter, the stickyness of the ground, or the always increasing costs for tickets and snacks.
Since my dad installs home theater systems for a living, we no doubt have a pretty good setup at our house. Good enough that this past year or so, I could honeslty say that I’ve actually enjoyed watching movies at home more than in theaters. I would either rent or buy the latest DVD release or find something on one of the many movie channels available through my cable provider.
As technology continues to advance, home systems have more to offer for people’s entertainment. And people are taking notice. Consumers take notice when DVD sales continue to increase while box office sales go down. Movie studios take notice by releasing movies to DVD faster than before and focusing on the home market. And technology companies take notice by increasing efforts for video games and the use of people’s personal computers for additional ways to enjoy their home systems.
If movie theaters don’t find ways to improve the experience of going out to a movie, people will find something else to do and movie studios will move towards other venues for selling their movies.
Tags: dvd, home theater, movies, technology, video games
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