Home Theatres Are No Longer The Exclusive Choice Of The Super Rich
It didn’t take forever for serious movie watchers to get into the home viewing spirit and adopt all the new technology to their home-based viewing areas. It used to be that a home theatre was the toy of only the very well-heeled, who had money to burn and lots of free time.
Fast forward a few decades, and suddenly everyone’s home has video cassette machines and a stack of movies sitting on a shelf. Back in the era when movies could only be viewed when projected on a screen, and before the advent of TV, a home theatre was a lot more troublesome to set up.
It’s not inexpensive to set up the stuff you’d need to show 35mm movie prints in your home, including a couple of projectors and a projection booth, which you’d need to create to do the job right. Of course, you couldn’t run the movie yourself, so you’d be obligated to pay a trained technician to roll the reels for you as you sat in your private theatre.
Even if you could afford to buy and set up the equipment in your domicile, prints of feature films were simply not available for mass consumption. If all of that wasn’t cumbersome enough, the numerous cans of film you’d keep on hand would present you with a storage disaster.
Of course, tape restructured the demand for film when the first video recorder-playback systems came on the market, and all at once, you could play the movies you wanted to see at your convenience. Discs added fuel to the fire for the home vs. movie theatre viewing controversy, because the first discs on the market looked and sounded much better than cassette tapes.
Then DVDs took over the market and good quality video, presented in a smaller, more convenient format, was the new rage in home entertainment. High quality home video on disc, with its clear sound, sharp picture and bonus features, started bringing home the bacon for the movie studios, and before long, discs were doing better for the studios than were movie tickets.
Still, it’s inadequate that video is created with increasingly improving quality, because many demand more when they sit down to watch. There’s something about the excitement you feel when the lights in a theatre fade to black and the movie rolls that gets into our blood as dedicated movie viewers.
That’s why fanatical movie buffs take the home viewing experience a step further and invest in home theatre furniture, controlled lighting and other products that enhance the experience. Consider the comfort that home theatre seats will provide viewers who are privileged enough to be invited to private screenings in the confines of your personal media nook.
Get your candy and soda pop ready, because once the films begin you may be there in your private film viewing space for an extended time.
#39 – My Movie Collection (Laserdiscs)
