Chris Nolan Saving Movie Theaters

DLD said:
And, since I did occasionally venture out to the movie theaters then, I can tell that, not only the high end home theater was better, most customers were shocked at how much better it was.
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As I said, I saw what high end home cinema could be in 1990 and it's still my vehement opinion that there's no way that a high end home cinema system based on STANDARD DEFINITION NTSC COLOR playing back from a LASER DISC could compete with a well set up cinema. (Not to mention there was no way to get new released films because there was at least a 3 year release window on films to home entertainment back then)

If you think otherwise I think it's best to leave it at that because your opinion doesn't tally at all with my experience.

Re the samsung, it's a *trial*. They aren't selling them yet, it's just what the title says. I found it to be quite good just on visuals. Aside from Dolby vision, most digital projection doesn't do very good black.


JB
 
I don't think we're disagreeing on the technical aspects. The resolution is higher on home screens while the dynamic range is greater on film. We disagree on the public perception of home vs. movie theater, where just judging from posts on this forum, home theater gets the edge.

PS. The idea exploded around 1986 where one could get a Dolby Surround receiver and a decent TV for a reasonable price. Even on VHS, people were stoked about having the antidote vial being kicked across the screen in the "Temple of Doom" or feeling F-14's fly "above" them in "Top Gun". The rear projection TV's took off in 1989 when Mitsubishi came out with 4502 at $2,700 and 5002 at $3,000, with a claimed 700 lines of resolution. They could not produce enough units to satisfy the demand and my employer, a well known big screen retailer in the greater LA area, had to scramble to find available units across the US. Working on the Westside of LA, our location had a substantial numbers of the entertainment industry customers and there was a huge interest on both the big screens and the HTS.

And, yes, I could drop some names ... but I won't.

Cheers.

PS. I thought the "Watchers" had a lot of nice shots. The Olympus video quality is generally ignored but, in the right hands, it's more than workable.
 
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John Brawley said:
(Not to mention there was no way to get new released films because there was at least a 3 year release window on films to home entertainment back then)
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Not sure that's so. I had Ghostbusters on VHS in 1985 and Back to the Future in 1986. I didn't really pay close attention to everything, but I do remember Fatal Attraction being available in 1988.
 
David Jimerson said:
Not sure that's so. I had Ghostbusters on VHS in 1985 and Back to the Future in 1986. I didn't really pay close attention to everything, but I do remember Fatal Attraction being available in 1988.
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Yeah, it varied depending on the movie. E.T. didn't hit VHS for six years. The Star Wars films took several years. Back then, I think they waited until all theatrical and TV revenue had dried up before releasing to VHS. If a film was really popular it stayed in theatres for years back then.
 
David Jimerson said:
Not sure that's so. I had Ghostbusters on VHS in 1985 and Back to the Future in 1986. I didn't really pay close attention to everything, but I do remember Fatal Attraction being available in 1988.
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Batutta said:
Yeah, it varied depending on the movie. E.T. didn't hit VHS for six years. The Star Wars films took several years. Back then, I think they waited until all theatrical and TV revenue had dried up before releasing to VHS. If a film was really popular it stayed in theatres for years back then.
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If I remember correctly, as I was still a kid, movies were very expensive to purchase on VHS in the early days, by today’s standards. I remember when I first started noticing them for sale in stores and it was nothing to see $50, $75, $100+ for a title.
 
Run&Gun said:
If I remember correctly, as I was still a kid, movies were very expensive to purchase on VHS in the early days, by today’s standards. I remember when I first started noticing them for sale in stores and it was nothing to see $50, $75, $100+ for a title.
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Eyeballs are what is valuable now. Used to be content. Now, just trying to get an audience with all the options out there is pretty crazy.
 
Run&Gun said:
If I remember correctly, as I was still a kid, movies were very expensive to purchase on VHS in the early days, by today’s standards. I remember when I first started noticing them for sale in stores and it was nothing to see $50, $75, $100+ for a title.
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This began to change around 1986/1987 when two things happened - almost everyone had a VCR at home and many began to give away/make pirated copies (even if "FBI protected") off two VCR's connected to one another. Early, in that era, the premier movies came out at $80-$90 retail (wholesale was around $55-$60) as specifically "rental" prices, i.e., sold to the video stores. What happened afterwards was that the demand for these top titles waned after 2-3 months, so if a store had twenty copies of a top film, within three months, it had close to a dozen pieces lodged permanently on shelves. That, obviously, tied up very valuable shelf space and so stores began to sell used copies for $25-$30. At that point, if a film was rented out for 60+ days at $2/day, it more than paid for its $60 wholesale, and with a tidy profit on top of that. Selling a popular title when it was still popular was a cherry on top. But it killed the new market for the studio releases because paying $90 for a new VHS tape was extremely rare. So, studios matched the program, offering a "for sale" pricing after 90-120 days or so. The cost of a VHS tape was around $1.50, including the carton cover box.

And then studios realized how huge the market was. If one looks back at the box office receipts of that era, a film like the "Terminator" grossed $38M in North America, with a mega hit being anything over $100M domestic. Well, Disney's "Cinderella" - an evergreen classic, as it's called - came out on VHS in 1989, sold 17 million copies and grossed over $108M (IIRC, it was priced at $14, the wholesale was $8 and Walmart and Target could easily sell it for $6). Well, after studios resisting this idea for years, the floodgates opened up. The number of tapes became so immense, almost everything became available, if not immediately, then by special order and it's been like this until the streamers took over the old inventory.
 
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Batutta said:
Yeah, it varied depending on the movie. E.T. didn't hit VHS for six years. The Star Wars films took several years. Back then, I think they waited until all theatrical and TV revenue had dried up before releasing to VHS. If a film was really popular it stayed in theatres for years back then.
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I remember the more popular it was, the longer it would be before they showed it on TV. It was a really big deal when Star Wars made its network debut. They had a pre-show with the stars.

EDIT: OK, it was just Hamill.

It does seem to me, though, that I was always able to rent the last year's biggest movies the next summer.
 
Run&Gun said:
If I remember correctly, as I was still a kid, movies were very expensive to purchase on VHS in the early days, by today’s standards. I remember when I first started noticing them for sale in stores and it was nothing to see $50, $75, $100+ for a title.
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Yeah, early on it was pretty expensive.
 
DLD said:
.... At that point, if a film was rented out for 60+ days at $2/day, it more than paid for its $60 wholesale, and with a tidy profit on top of that. Selling a popular title when it was still popular was a cherry on top. But it killed the new market for the studio releases because paying $90 for a new VHS tape was extremely rare. So, studios matched the program, offering a "for sale" pricing after 90-120 days or so...
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Minor correction on terminology, as it dawned on me again. $25-$30 was known as "sell-through" pricing and most consumers waited out these 3-4 months in order to purchase a brand new, unopened tape. That, to some extent, made the video store chains buy fewer copies as "rentals" because it became harder for them to resell used ones. The video chains also demanded either a longer delay for the price drop or, more frequently, lower upfront prices. And, within a year or so, the retail price went down from $80-$90 to $60-$70 and the used tapes to $10-$15, or about half of fresh ones. In terms of types, parents preferred to purchase new copies for their kids to watch in perpetuity. The $10-$15 oldies fell into into the "I like it but it's not like it's my favorite film of all time or anything" category.
 
David Jimerson said:
Not sure that's so. I had Ghostbusters on VHS in 1985 and Back to the Future in 1986. I didn't really pay close attention to everything, but I do remember Fatal Attraction being available in 1988.
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The "normal" release window was 1-2 years for the film in theaters, and even then it would be in the big cities first and then roll out to smaller regional centers. And often there were mopnths and sometimes years difference in countries (territories) as well. Worldwide simultaneous release only became a thing to try and beat pirates or when the film was really bad to try and beat word of mouth pre-internet. Pre home video.

It started contracting, but initially was after it's 1-2 years in the cinema it then went to VHS RENTAL first....Also other venues like planes and ships.

That was usually another year or so and THEN it would be available to buy about the same time it would get it's first run on TV.

Again, no way it was normal for a VHS copy of a film to be "out" at the same time the film was in the cinema. There was always a tiered release schedule of some kind.

No way was a VHS ever going to look as good as a FILM PRINT in a cinema either.

JB
 
From an editorial on the same subject:

«I go to the movies for a great many reasons, first and foremost to experience fantastic films. One essential reason I go to the movies, though, is to escape. And that sometimes means…escaping my home. But it’s all to get to a different place that I call home. A place where it’s dark and safe and anonymous, but where that safety affords me the privilege of luxuriating in something adventurous or even dangerous. A place where I’m inside myself, but also out there in the universe.»
 
John Brawley said:
The "normal" release window was 1-2 years for the film in theaters, and even then it would be in the big cities first and then roll out to smaller regional centers. And often there were mopnths and sometimes years difference in countries (territories) as well. Worldwide simultaneous release only became a thing to try and beat pirates or when the film was really bad to try and beat word of mouth pre-internet. Pre home video.

It started contracting, but initially was after it's 1-2 years in the cinema it then went to VHS RENTAL first....Also other venues like planes and ships.

That was usually another year or so and THEN it would be available to buy about the same time it would get it's first run on TV.

Again, no way it was normal for a VHS copy of a film to be "out" at the same time the film was in the cinema. There was always a tiered release schedule of some kind.
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Of course there was a release schedule. Nonetheless, the VHS release date of Ghostbusters -- a movie which opened in theaters on June 8, 1984 -- was October 31, 1985. At least in North America.

When Back to the Future was released on VHS in 1986, it included for the first time the "to be continued" card at the end, which was not seen in the theater.

Others --

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan was released to theaters in June 1982; the VHS release was November 1982. Poltergeist was released in theaters on the same day as STII; it was also released to VHS in 1982.

Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home was released in theaters November 1986; the VHS release was September 1987.

I bring these up because they're tapes I had.

Again, though, these were North American releases. It may have been different in Australia.



No way was a VHS ever going to look as good as a FILM PRINT in a cinema either.
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Of course not.
 
niki said:
From an editorial on the same subject:

«I go to the movies for a great many reasons, first and foremost to experience fantastic films. One essential reason I go to the movies, though, is to escape. And that sometimes means…escaping my home. But it’s all to get to a different place that I call home. A place where it’s dark and safe and anonymous, but where that safety affords me the privilege of luxuriating in something adventurous or even dangerous. A place where I’m inside myself, but also out there in the universe.»
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Which one was this from?
 
Run&Gun said:
Technology and the experience that can be had at home now, is the big thing. For the average person, the 'at home' experience was always going to be very sub-par 20-30 years ago. Small SD CRT's, VHS tapes, internal TV speakers. Few people had laser discs. Then we got DVD's and quality jumped, but most people were still watching on small SD CRT's. Things improved again with HD, Blu-ray and affordable surround sound, but the average person's home experience was still far from the movie theater even though it had jumped exponentially over what we had in the SD days. But now, with very large affordable UHD flat panels and even larger affordable HD/UHD projectors, you can get an excellent experience with minimal cost and effort, now. No, most people will never have a screen in their house as large as what the average commercial movie theater has, but the average commercial movie theater now has much less to offer over the home experience compared to the 90's. For most releases, there is almost no reason for me to go to the theater vs. watching at home.
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In a movie theatre the optimal seat is a fair few rows back (can't be the front row, but can't be at the back either), and you can't always get your optimal set! But at home I can always sit in the optimal seat, just like Sheldon Cooper.

So you're very very far from the screen when sitting in a movie theatre, even when in the optimal seat.

However at home that optimal set can be much much much closer, so you don't need a screen a hundred times bigger.

That 60" screen/project will do the trick just perfectly!
 
IronFilm said:
In a movie theatre the optimal seat is a fair few rows back (can't be the front row, but can't be at the back either), and you can't always get your optimal set! But at home I can always sit in the optimal seat, just like Sheldon Cooper.

So you're very very far from the screen when sitting in a movie theatre, even when in the optimal seat.

However at home that optimal set can be much much much closer, so you don't need a screen a hundred times bigger.

That 60" screen/project will do the trick just perfectly!
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The front row, or even first few rows, in a commercial theater are just a cruel joke. You are way below the screen level and so close that you are looking almost straight up the entire time. My optimal seat in a theater is dead-center vertically and horizontally, which does put you a little far back, at least in a lot of theaters. Funny enough though, at home in my den, none of the seating is centered, because of the layout of the room and furniture. In my recliner, I’m probably two to three feet off center and the couch is probably four to five. But in the bedroom, my spot in bed has me lined up with the center of the TV on the wall. Of course it’s mounted much higher than a person laying in the bed, but I have it tilted down so it’s pretty square from the viewing angle from there.
 
Had a mate who projected movies onto his bedroom CEILING! So it would be perfect for when him (and a friend...) was lying in bed.
 
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