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Consumers Prefer Movies At Home
Ubergrendle writes "A poll conducted by Ipsos on behalf of the Associated Press and AOL confirmed that 73% of movie viewers prefer to watch movies at home rather than at a theater. This article comes on the heels of a consistently poor box office this year, even despite the presence of the new Star Wars film. Despite this demand for home viewing, only 5% admitted to downloading a movie from the internet."
We dont like paying 11$ for a movie!
Well wonder why?
Movie Theater
Ticket: $9.25 x 2 = $18.50
Popcorn: $3.75 (would you like a large for $2.00 more?)
Beverage: $4.25 (would you like a xxl with free refills for $2.00 more?)
Candy: $3.00
Going home and getting laid: Priceless.
Home Theater
Rental: $4.00
Popcorn: $1.00
12 Pack of Coors Ligh: $9.99 + deposit
Candy: $1.24
Turning Gili off, and getting laid: Priceless.
Not necessarily, but the bathrooms are still icky.
Only $9.50?
Dude, where I live movies can cost as much as $16 CDN per person. Even after the conversion, I wish I had it as good as $9.50.
Hint: Try the "next chapter" button. Does the trick for me.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
I've just looked in to getting tickets for Batman Begins from the Vue cinema chain online, £6.75 + 50p booking fee which is like $13.50 USD :(
:(
:(
/o\
Not to mention when you get their if you want a coke or popcorn you're looking at another £5-6 ($9-11)
And (no offence) the sizes of the drinks and popcorn are clear 'American' sizes, i.e. ranging from 'huge' to 'fucking huge', with 'fucking huge' costing only about 25p more than 'huge'
You can buy the DVD when it comes out for pretty much the price of one adult cinema ticket, a coke and a popcorn.
Anyway, that's my rant
The problem with slashdot is that most of its users were bullied and stuffed into lockers as kids!
actually most theaters do have captioning, you just have to ask for the mirror thing that goes in your armrest.
article w/diagrams here
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Typically, first run theatres for at minimum the first week of a movie's release, will pay 100% of ticket sales to the studios. They don't see a dime of that money you're paying to get into the theatre. All their money is made from snacks. As the weeks pass, they'll drop it to 80% or 90% of ticket sales which when the other theatres will pick it up. This coming from my wife who managed a second run theatre for years. I had asked her why they were always at least two weeks behind the big theatres in getting movies. Simply put, they had to rely on some money from ticket sales to stay operational.
I rarely go to theatres anymore. For my wife and I to go, get a couple of drinks and some popcorn, we're easily paying $30. The same thing at home, costs less than $10. Not to mention all the other benefits that were listed above.
I think that the best thing I've read on this issue lately is an article in the New Yorker by Louis Menand. It is about the historical perspective (TV robbing movies of their dominance, the rise of the blockbuster, etc.).
r at_atlarge
Here's the url:
http://www.newyorker.com/critics/atlarge/?050207c
My favorite quote:
And what is the main cinematic experience? The tickets, including the surcharge for ordering online, cost about the same as the monthly cable bill. A medium popcorn is five dollars; the smallest bottled water is three. The show begins with twenty minutes of commercials, spots promoting the theatre chain, and previews for movies coming out next Memorial Day, sometimes a year from next Memorial Day. The feature includes any combination of the following: wizards; slinky women of few words; men of few words who can expertly drive anything, spectacularly wreck anything, and leap safely from the top of anything; characters from comic books, sixth-grade world-history textbooks, or "Bulfinch's Mythology"; explosions; phenomena unknown to science; a computer whiz with attitude; a brand-name soft drink, running shoe, or candy bar; an incarnation of pure evil; more explosions; and the voice of Robin Williams. The movie feels about twenty minutes too long; the reviews are mixed; nobody really loves it; and it grosses several hundred million dollars.
Dude, you're way off, at least for the big cities... In Los Angeles there are theaters that regularly charge $14 per ticket, and a few that will charge more because they're trying to throw in some "added value" to the moviegoing experience. (Granted, in these high-priced examples, they don't show ads, and sometimes not trailers...)
This sig intentionally left justified.
So I watch movies at home so I can try to create a more compressed volume level range in order to be able to tolerate the movie. Theaters put me in pain, while my home surround system does not. Now, if only studios would recognize that just because digital movies can "hold" uncompressed soundtracks without distorting, doesn't mean the a human likes to hear that much dynamic range. To some of us, it's very painful.
applies most places(even here in Canada), but not in the States. The ominous DMCA prohibits the circumvention of any copy-protection mechanism, and I imagine(as it's so loosely written), that it also extends to bypassing it by downloading content from someone else who has himself bypassed it.
But IANAL
Or use DVDShrink and rip&burn your own copy. DVD burners are almost standard in computers now. Probably better quality than a download, and much quicker.
Philips 642 DVD Player - It's flying off the shelves at every other store!
Where's my free iPod!? Until then, I'll settle for a kiss...
Rip the DVD down with DVD Shrink (it's shareware -- go get it now!) and you are back in charge.
You have two options:
1) remove the button-disabling crap but keep the commercials, FBI warning, etc. (Why you would want this stuff, I have no idea...) If you don't have a dual-layer burner, you may have to recompress the content. DVD Shrink will handle all this for you. It's a one-click process.
-or-
2) Remaster the disk. You choose what to keep and the amount of compression to use (if necessary). Throw away the marketing crap and you can fit most movies onto a single layer blank (read: "cheap!") DVD at full quality without recompression! Yes another reason to do away with commercials.
Put the original away and use the copy. When (if?) the copy becomes too scratched up to work, throw it in the trash and repeat.