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55” TVs have been available for decades but not affordable. I purchased a 60” plasma TV about 2 decades ago but it cost about $2500 dollars. Now I can pick up a 55” 4K TV from Best Buy for $220.

The widespread affordability of large screen TVs has absolutely eroded the value of a movie theater.

A 55” Rear-projection television was way less than a 60” plasma TV back then. Like you I went a little upmarket but from what I recall budget 1080i options were well under a grand.

What matters is the premium over a normal TV and how long it lasts. Spending an extra few hundred for something that lasts 5+ years wasn’t going to break most families budgets. As demonstrated by just how many of those TV’s where sold.

Rear projection TVs always looked like garbage. They were just the best option at the time. There’s a reason no one sells them anymore.

> What matters is the premium over a normal TV and how long it lasts.

I think what matters for this conversation is how close the experience is to a theater. Rear projection 1080i is pretty far.

> Spending an extra few hundred for something that lasts 5+ years wasn’t going to break most families budgets. As demonstrated by just how many of those TV’s where sold.

Do you have some stats for how many were sold? Because I have hunch that sales of large screen TVs had absolutely skyrocketed over the past 20 years.

I had an awesome 1080p rear projection DLP TV in a dark room. A brighter screen works better in a bright room, but you really want a dark room for an optimal experience anyway.

The technology got quite good but inherently took up more space and eventually couldn’t compete on price. Though that also means you’re sitting closer to the screen which made replacement flatscreens in the same space look smaller.

nasmorn 196 days ago

Also 220 is in the same ballpark as going to two movies as a family with snacks. Three would already be a stretch.

user34283 196 days ago

Probably many underestimate the importance of the sound.

A home theater arguably is as much about the subwoofer and surround speakers as it is about the screen.

Especially the subwoofer has a big impact. When you feel the sound it's literally impactful. At other times, it really helps immerse yourself in the scene, even if it's not a typical bass sound, but like background noise in a busy city street.

The properly configured subwoofer makes you feel like you're there, while it just falls flat on a regular speaker.

That said, the fewest people have a home theater setup, so it's probably irrelevant to why people stopped going to the cinema.

sbarre 196 days ago

I got a 4k 55" TV for $299 earlier this year. It weighs maybe 10lbs, and is super thin and fits on the wall.

Large 4k TVs being this accessible/affordable for most households has not been an option for "decades"..

Screen size makes little difference for an individual they can just sit closer, viewing angels are the problem for a family where 55” doesn’t cut it.

4k also makes little difference here, most people really don’t care as seen by how many people use simple HD vs 4k streaming.

> Screen size makes little difference for an individual they can just sit closer

This is silly. Most people don’t want to sit in a chair 3 feet from their TV to make it fill more of their visual area. A large number of people are also not watching movies individually. I watch TV with my family far more than I watch alone.

> This is silly.

Tell that to every streaming on their tablets sitting on their stomachs. People even watch movies on their phones but they aren’t holding them 15’ away.

Also you don’t need to sit 3’ from a 37” TV.

No one says the experience of watching on their tablet matches the experience of watching a movie in the theater.

But this isn’t the point. TVs are furniture. People generally have a spot where the TV naturally fits in the room regardless of its size. No one buys a TV and then arranges the rest of their furniture to sit close enough to fill their visual space. If the couch is 8 feet from the TV, it’s 8 feet from the TV.

People watching their tablet on a couch in from of a 55+” TV with a surround sound speaker system says on some level it’s a better experience. I’ve seen plenty of people do this to say it’s common behavior.

> No one buys a TV and then arranges the rest of their furniture to sit close enough to fill their visual space. If the couch is 8 feet from the TV, it’s 8 feet from the TV.

It’s common on open floor plans / large rooms for a couch to end up in a completely arbitrary distance from a TV rather than next to a wall. Further setting up the TV on the width vs length vs diagonal of a room commonly provides two or more options for viewing distance.

nevertoolate 196 days ago

I do. I’ve researched the optimal distance for a smallish tv screen (which fits between the studio monitor stand). I move the tv closer when watching a film, it stands on hacked together wooden box like thing which has some yoga tools and film magazines in it - it has wheels. Crazy stuff. There is a flipchart like drawing of my daughter covering the tv normally which we flip when watching films.

vharish 196 days ago

Living rooms are not that big to start with. I don't think you actually asked anyone's opinion on this! :D

Small TVs are not comfortable to watch. No one I know is okay with getting a smaller TV and moving their sofa closer. That sounds ridiculous. If there's any comfort to this capatilistic economy, it is the availability of technology at throw away prices. Most people would rather spend on a TV than save the money.

As for the theatre being obsolete, I do agree with you, atleast to some extent. I think everyone is right here. All factors combined is what makes going to the theatre not worth the effort for most of the movies. It's just another nice thing, not what it used to be.

Also, the generational difference too. I think teen and adolescents have a lot of ways to entertain themselves. The craze for movies isn't the same as it used to be. And we grew old(er). With age, I've grown to be very picky with movies.

37+” isn’t a small TVs. Resolution was an issue in the 90’s but midsized TV’s have been around for a long time.

Also, I see plenty of people use tablets to watch stuff laying on the couch in front of a big screen TV. So viewing distance is plenty relevant.

bunderbunder 196 days ago

Movie theaters still win on a couple fronts, but not by enough to overcome the downsides like the “person behind you chewing popcorn with their mouth open” factor. Also, movies are getting long enough to really need an intermission or two. Legs need stretching, bladders need emptying. If Hollywood and the theaters won’t provide that, at least at home I can use the pause button. I’m looking for a pleasant evening, not a simulation of what it’s like to be on a three hour flight.

Kwpolska 196 days ago

It’s saying something that your post lists all the negative aspects of movie theaters and positive aspects of watching at home without actually specifying why “Movie theaters still win on a couple fronts”.

PearlRiver 195 days ago

I went to see Avatar on a Imax screen. It was already about a month after the release so it was pretty quiet.

But those kinds of movies are rare- and it is expensive. You have to drive and park for half an hour, pay 30 euro for two tickets and ofcourse the drinks. Not something I want to do every week.

mitthrowaway2 195 days ago

One way theaters win is that you can meet your friends / S.O. there without bringing them home; some people don't have living accommodations that are suited to hosting guests.

philistine 196 days ago

Yeah, these things take a long time to shake out. We still have cable subscriptions because older people watch TV that way, but no one would tell you that linear television is thriving. We're only now seeing sports start to somewhat move to streaming services, when the writing's on the wall for a while.

And would you entertain the idea that few movies are worth seeing because going to the movie theatre is a hard sell for audiences, and studios produce movies that try and adapt to that reality?

nunez 196 days ago

That part. But it even worse than that.

My wife and I used to be avid theater goers. We used to watch at least five movies a year in the theaters; more if you count the times we went individually. Almost all of the theaters we visited were high-end lounge-style movie houses. Think "Alamo Drafthouse," which is a poster child for the downfall of theaters I'm about to describe.

We're the perfect demo for the movie theaters: free time and disposable income. Yet, we've only seen two movies in the theaters this year, and not for lack of trying.

Theaters are in a kind-of death spiral. they're losing revenue to streaming, so they can't invest in making an experience that attracts people to the theater, which leads to them losing more revenue to streaming, etc. Companies circling the drain are perfect targets for M&A and enshittification in the name of growth.

This is exactly what's happening to high-end theaters: Moviehouse and Eatery (a small chain of high-end theaters) selling to Cinépolis, Alamo Drafthouse selling to Private Equity, IPIC starting to raise red flags, and probably more.

The end result is always the same: endless ads appear where mostly-ad-free prerolls used to be, food and drink prices go up while quality goes down, service gets worse as staff are asked to do more for effectively-less pay, and previously-super comfortable lie-flat lounge seating gets more and more decrepit, all while increasing ticket prices!

All of this is even more insulting when the movies you pay to see are distributed by Netflix or Apple and are all but guaranteed to end up on their platforms in mere weeks, sometimes with better post-production.

We used to happily pay $100+ for a night out at the movies seven years ago. Our experiences have gotten costlier and more disappointing, however. Families deciding to drop $1500 on a 100" TV with an Atmos soundbar and relegating the theaters to the past makes total sense to me. It's sad --- theaters are a social experience and have given me so many great memories --- but it was all but an eventuality the minute streaming on Netflix went live.

krustyburger 195 days ago

I don’t think Alamo Drafthouse sold to private equity, but rather to Sony.

[^0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/03/03/dine-in-movie-chain-alamo-dr...

nunez 190 days ago

They (well, Tim League and friends) sold to Altamont first [^0]. Altamont sold them to Sony last year. [^1]

And the enshittification is already happening. That one of the Drafthouse theaters IN THEIR HOME TURF (Slaughter, outside of Austin) unionized with the UAW and names Sony in their formation letter speaks volumes. [^2]

[^1]: https://altamontcapital.com/altamont-capital-partners-sells-...

[^2]: https://old.reddit.com/r/AlamoDrafthouse/comments/1jjtssc/al...

cogman10 196 days ago

Well, I'd say that the standard movie format just isn't what people want anymore.

The problem movies have is they have a relatively short amount of time to deliver a complete story. 90 to 120 minutes just isn't a lot of time to be compelling. That's why some of the best movies are split into parts.

Consider Andor as an example. It's some of the best media ever made (IMO) and it simply would not work in the movie format. What makes Andor work is the excellent character development and the time spent building and shaping the universe under a fascist government.

Andor had no length constraints per episode. That allowed it to tell complete satisfying stories with the promise that you'll get more in the next episode.

Telling a detailed story is different than telling a compelling story.

Andor isn’t as compelling as the original movie or significantly longer than the Harry Potter series of movies. Babylon 5 is probably the poster child for a long running space opera series with a planned story arch, but they added plenty of filler because you don’t actually need that much time.

If anything movies tend to be better than TV shows because of the time constraints rather than the budget.

NoGravitas 196 days ago

Eh, the current 10-hour seasons are the worst of both worlds.

Telling a story in a "tight 90" means making very deliberate choices about what to include, what not to, and how to make scenes do double duty. Having 23 episodes a season lets you slow down, spend time with the characters that's not all focused on the season plot, it lets you have B-stories in every episode. A 10-hour season doesn't get to do that, but it doesn't enforce the same discipline as 90-120 minutes.

Compare Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to Star Trek: Discovery or Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. I greatly enjoy SNW, but the characters and their relationships with each other are in no way as substantial as in DS9 (or even TNG, which was much less character-focused than DS9).

pimeys 196 days ago

I mean... there's a ton of movies worth the effort. Just take a look into the big festivals every year: Cannes, Venice, Berlin... Many amazing movies.

angiolillo 196 days ago

For many of the families I know it's less about the quality of movies than the cost and effort of going to the movies.

Going to the movies costs an extra hour for the round-trip to the theater, ~$40 for adult tickets, ~$60 for the kids (2h babysitter or movie tickets), ~$20 for concessions. Whereas watching at home on our 75" TV with homemade popcorn costs a tiny fraction of that, even including electricity and popcorn kernels and the amortized cost of the TV.

As nice as it can be to see a good movie in a theater, it's typically not so much better than watching at home that it's worth an extra hour and more than a hundred dollars.

pimeys 195 days ago

Depends where you are. In Berlin we have around 20 movie theaters nearby. It costs 14 euros per ticket and the nearest theater is in a walking distance.

Yes we watch a lot of movies home, but there are multiple festivals every year curating interesting content.

airstrike 196 days ago

You're replying to ChatGPT