[hfsktr]

1. The experience.

2. Not everyone has a nice entertainment system in their home, if your TV isn't good or the sound isn't good or you got a DVD instead of Blu Ray or you had to stream but have crappy internet (etc).

3. If you don't control the TV you have to watch whatever is on (parents/teens fighting over the the only TV). Maybe less common now but not everyone has multiple TVs.

4. It forces me to carve out the time to watch/finish the movie because I don't get to just pause it and get distracted.

I go if I want to see the movie badly (and only on a specific day when they reduce ticket prices). I also like the gigantic screen and loud noise. I don't usually remember a movie by the time it's out of the cinema and so never remember to watch it later.

[dorfsmay]

1. the experience is exactly what the parent poster complained about, the smell of other people, but I'd add rude people (talking, standing, walking during the movie), the wait before the movie, trying to get out of the parking like at the same time as everybody else etc...

2. no big TV: true, although chances are that the electrical consumption delta between your old and a newer TV would pay for the newer TV in a year. Also, I don't care about cool/artistic images, I only care about the story told by the movie, but for people who are into that, this is a valid point, and probably the only one really.

3. idk, on the other hand, I ended liking movies I would have never watched myself, but did because my spouse/kids wanted to watch it.

4. you might want to read about focus, meditation, etc...

5. I keep a list of movies, every time somebody tells me about a good movie I haven't seen, I write it down. It's way better than endlessly wonder "what should we watch tonight?" or watch what advertiser tells us we should watch.

[Arizhel]

#2 and #3 really don't make sense any more. If you can't afford a $100-200 TV, then how the heck do you afford $20+ tickets? The TV will pay for itself very quickly. TVs are dirt cheap these days, and the "small" ones are not much more than $100. (I put "small" in quotes because that's for a 32" screen, which when I was young was considered a fairly large screen.) And if you can't find easy access to that movie, then just watch another. Basically you're saying that cinemas are for people with exceedingly poor impulse control.

As for #4, I can only "force" my bladder so much. At home, I can pause and take a bathroom break; I can't do that at the cinema.

As for the "loud noise", deafeningly loud noises are bad for your hearing. At home, I can set the volume to an appropriate and comfortable level.