Also, growing up in a small town in Yugoslavia in the 80s definitely didn’t guarantee a top-tier cinema experience, to put it mildly. But the feeling I had watching the James Bond opening credits from a damaged film reel, with frayed subtitles projected from a decades-old projector, is something I can never quite recreate when watching on a 4K screen from a perfect source. So there's that.
</old-man-rant>
As a kid who grew up in 90’s I would say it is easily better than what cinema had back then.
I don’t have that high expectations of sound/video as many people will point out that streaming kills the quality but for all its worth still much better than what I need to enjoy a movie.
As you say with the image quality being as high at home now plus a decent surround system really makes the theater experience at home very enjoyable.
If you are in an urban area and are not a millionaire, you probably live in some kind of apartment or studio. And yes, you can stick up a projector and a good surround system... but it might be that the builder cut corners on the floors and your neighbors already come knocking when you are talking, much less turn up the audio system to a tenth of the sound pressure a good cinema sound system provides.
I don't have any of the problem - but I don't have "cinema sound system" as I mentioned whatever I have must have just clear sound and clear doesn't mean loud. I don't need "sound experience" to enjoy a movie.
Unfortunately, most cinema movies are not properly remastered in their audio tracks, but keep the original cinema mix. That results in very silent dialogue (which is not a problem in a cinema, at least as long as people behave and don't yap around all the time) and very loud sequences particularly in action shots.
When you now give such a movie to your usual home theater setup, you have to turn up the volume enough so you can understand the dialogue and either constantly turn it down whenever it gets heated or live with neighbors complaining.
Straight-to-streaming releases usually don't suffer from that problem, because they are made and mixed for normal users streaming on their laptops with shitty speakers. Note I said usually, because Disney's Star Wars series are still mastered for decent setups with dynamic range.
There's a debate to be had about the impact of that on storytelling, as straight-to-streaming these days is produced with the movie/episode on a side screen while people are doing something else, so everything that you would normally see on a screen is verbally described by actors, but that's another debate entirely.
As an american and English as my only human language, even I need subtitles.
And the movie "Tenet" was so bad that I ragequit 30 minutes in. Horrible horrible audio.
Post-1990s, directors forgot how to mix audio for stereo.
And streaming services assumed you had at least a 5.1 system with a dedicated center channel.
It doesn't help that many actors these days have become students of the "mumble acting" school of acting. It's amazing watching some 50-year-old movie from the 70s and the dialog is crystal-clear and perfectly understandable.
Back then dynamic range in cinemas also wasn't there and TVs were mono as well. You couldn't fix stuff in post to a large degree either, so in moviemaking you were all but forced to have sets as quiet as possible and actors speak clearly.
Funny enough, I want to see a version of Chungking Express that feels processed to look like an early-2000s digital camera.
Commercial theaters are all digital now. They don't even have film projectors anymore. Some independent or "revival" cinemas might still have them.
The best thing a home theatre system has that is equivalent to the 90's experience and superior to current cinema is that you can have an intermission to take a leak.
In the 90's, the intermission was long enough to visit the bathroom and then buy some more popcorn and candy. These days I have to miss some part of the middle of the movie.
I wouldn't complain much about people singing along to a ballad or such but yapping, you can go do that somewhere else.
The problem isn’t with “human presence”. It’s with the select few who can’t or won’t control their own behavior out of respect for others.
Also, if the music feels bad enough to where people find talking to each other more pleasant than listening, isn't that the fault of the 'sensory experience?'
It’s like people talking through a comedy show. Saying something quietly to the person next to you? Whatever. Talking loudly for 20 minutes? Get the fuck out. Go talk to your friends at a bar and let people who came to hear the act enjoy the act.
> if the music feels bad enough to where people find talking to each other more pleasant than listening
But then leave. If you don’t like the show, it’s totally fair for you to just get up and go. Talking through a show you don’t care about and disturbing people who do want to be there? Why?
What's wrong with that?
I've seen several other movies (normal ones, not 3D/IMAX/etc.) here since I moved here, and they were all the same. Audiences here have excellent behavior.
We're planning to see Project Hail Mary this weekend when it comes out, this time on IMAX.
Some of it is minor but just suggests to me that many people lack any sense that they should be aware of others around them. Just today I was walking down the street and a woman was stopped, in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at her phone. She was in front of a shop door but not right in front of it, so she was half-blocking both people passing on the sidewalk and people trying to get into the store. I see this kind of thing so often now, in store aisles, on sidewalks, etc., and a part of me wants to go up to these people and inform them that there are other people around them and that if they want to take a moment to look at their phone they should step to the side.
It's not "people". One half of all people grows up playing contact sports or at least have some form of rough-and-tumble with their homies in schoolyards. This half also knows that you can get punched if things get too rowdy.
The other does not. Almost all of the entitled road blockers are in this category.
I picked it up and put it back and they still gave it third place.
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/why-did-the-beatles-stop-tourin...
The problem with projectors is that they can't display black: they're shining light through a filter, so they can't produce a true black, and the contrast ratio isn't that great. For best effect, you need an extremely dark room. With an OLED screen, black is absolutely black, because black pixels simply aren't lit up at all, and you get better contrast ratio than a projector. As a bonus, you can even watch it with the lights on.
Obviously it depends on your projector/screen choice but it’ll probably be cheaper, too. The portability is also nice.
If I watch a movie by myself, I would choose my $500 27" 4k monitor connected to proper speakers/headphone over a $300 55" TV without external soundbar any day. Most people probably will choose the opposite, which I totally understand.
Off topic, but since I retired a few years ago, I go to movies all the time but I go during the week and catch movies between 11am to 3pm. Theaters are almost empty, but just enough other people in the theater to feel like a shared experience. I see about five or six movies a month, and my wife goes with me about half the time. I worried that my local theater would go out of business until we went to a Saturday night movie and all 16 theaters seemed busy, will wall to wall people in the huge lobby area.
So, I hope the movie industry survives in close to its present form. I share your fondness to foreign films, BTW.
Well, it suited my tastes anyway. :)
Presently, we watch foreign movies at home 95% of the time and maybe a Hollywood production when they manage to find their roots and create something worth watching.