One Step Ahead

The companies that make movies always need to have an advantage over what you can do at home. That's pretty obvious, otherwise you'd just stay home and watch movies. One big advantage that home viewing will never have is that you are "out". You get to go somewhere, see other people, etc. You can't go out on a date at home (well, you can, but it's not the same).

 

As obvious as that is, it's interesting to note that just about every advancement in movie presentation in the 60 years has been done specifically to give theaters an advantage:

 

Widescreen - Once TV came along and used an aspect ratio very close to what movies of the time did (Academy standard 1.37:1), the movie companies switched to widescreen formats that were very difficult to display on a television set. And that TV standard lasted for many decades until it was replaced with HDTV which uses a much more "widescreen-friendly" aspect of 1.66:1 (16x9).

 

Stereo/Surround/Sensurround sound - Again, homes did not have the ability to do decent surround sound until about ten years ago, and only with the advent of Blu-ray can you get true theater quality sound at home. Sensurround Sound was a trademarked system that used large subwoofers to let the audience "feel" the movie (as in Earthquake), and that can be achieved at home now to with a decent subwoofer.

 

IMAX - You still can't get the kind of immersion at home as you can with a 7-story-high movie screen, but TVs nowadays have high enough resolution that you can sit close to a big one and simulate the same area of coverage.

 

3D - I think it's obvious now why the movie companies are pushing 3D so hard. Because it's still very expensive to get it at home. It's basically a device to get you in the theaters, just as it was the last two times it was in fashion.

 

They really don't need to worry about me - I will always like going to movies, for all the little reasons. There is something very exciting about seeing a movie on the silver screen with stranger's noisy kids running around and my feet sticking to the floor. You just can't get that at home.