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]]> http://www.rajdash.com/guy-fi-movies-video-mashup/feed/ 0 http://www.rajdash.com/the-movie-theater-or-the-home-theater/ http://www.rajdash.com/the-movie-theater-or-the-home-theater/#comments Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:38:19 +0000 Raj Dash http://www.rajdash.com/the-movie-theater-or-the-home-theater/

With regular movie ticket prices ranging between $8-12 versus tons of free content online, not to mention the fact that flat panel TVs and computer screens are increasing in size while dropping in price, movie theaters are potentially headed for extinction in the future. They’ve got to do something to differentiate themselves. The question is, is there anything they can do?

Ask yourself, if you can purchase the DVD of a movie you like for, say, $18-25 and you have at least a 22-inch widescreen computer screen or a 32-inch TV screen at home, would you favor that rather than an $11 movie ticket? That is, even if it’s a film you’re dying to see, would you spend the $11 and see it once, or wait possibly months to buy the DVD – which you can watch over and over at leisure. No trudging through snow-filled parking lots or whatever, screaming kids, sticky seats and so on?

Personally, I divide up movies into two categories: the type I absolutely have to see on the big screen – primarily because of the photography – and the kind that I can or have to wait for. Unfortunately, over the past two years, a lot of the movies that I “absolutely” had to see in a theater I missed. But now that I have a 22-inch widescreen computer screen, I’ve hooked up my TV capture card and I’m watching movies on TV there. Beats the 13-inch TV that I used to use.

Once I move to Toronto, though, and once I can afford it, I’m planning to have both a single larger flat screen (36-42 inches) as well as a computer screen array of 6-8 22-inch screens arranged in a matrix. This will allow me to work on video editing projects with more ease.

Will I stop going to theaters? Not at all. Toronto still has several theatres throughout the city with large or even giant screens – just like every movie theater used to have. There is also the IMAX monster screen at Ontario Place by Lake Ontario. The question really is, will anyone else be going to a movie theater in, say, 10-20 years? Or will we all have 65-inch screens at home? Or even those tiny mini-projectors that attach to special goggles/ spectacles and present the equivalent of a 65-inch screen right in front of your retina? And if so, how will this affect the standard “dinner and a movie” type of date? Or did those already go out of fashion?