[ozim]

With current TV setups or projector technology I basically have cinema in my living room.

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.

[dylan604]

One of the criteria for me to go to the theater was the big screen and big sound would really add to the experience. The last film I saw in the theater was was so loud that it physically hurt and ruined the experience.

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.

[foobarian]

These days it's hard for the screen and sound alone to compete with home theater tech. So the only remaining edge a theater might have is the presence of others. The Minecraft movie was the perfect example of this. Some of our kid's classmates went to see it multiple times due to the viral audience cues. And to think that some theaters tried to suppress it.

[mschuster91]

If you got a house of your own, yes.

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.

[ozim]

I do live in an apartment and I am far from a millionaire.

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.

[mschuster91]

> 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.

[evrenesat]

Thanks for clarifying that. I always thinking it was due to my bad hearing or lack of fluency! English is my second language, and without subtitles, I'm having trouble to understand the dialogues without increasing the volume until I reach a level where I also got disturbed from the sound effects, bg music etc. It's a bigger issue with movies, not only due to what you explained about sound mixing, but also error correction of my brain works worse without the context, unlike series where I know the plot and the characters.

[mystraline]

Watch out for any show with Christopher Nolan as director. He is notorious for terrible audio mixing, and having actor mumble and otherwise dictate horribly.

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.

[ethbr1]

It's not you; it's media (including TV).

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.

[shiroiuma]

>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.

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.

[mschuster91]

> 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.

[mosura]

Back pre digital I was once lucky enough to see Aliens on one of the private cinemas at Fox, and it was astounding. I think people underestimate how poorly operated most normal cinemas used to be, combined with maybe not the best prints etc.

[Telemakhos]

I remember seeing In the Mood for Love on the big screen in my local arthouse cinema back around 2000. It was shot with analogue film and projected as such, and the sheer details of the textures were astounding. It's not a bad film on my 4k monitor, but I don't feel the same awe.

[jjmarr]

Blame lossy compression to save bandwidth. There's no way to legally stream in Blu-ray quality.

[danbolt]

I’ve only seen that movie on an old MacBook about a decade ago, but I can certainly believe it’d be a treat seeing it the way you mention.

Funny enough, I want to see a version of Chungking Express that feels processed to look like an early-2000s digital camera.

[the_af]

Well, to be fair, In the Mood for Love is a gorgeous movie. It does look great in almost every screen. It shines in a cinema screen.

[SoftTalker]

IIRC in the film era there was one "master" of the movie, it was duplicated multiple times to make negative versions of the film, then those negatives are used to make the positive copies that are sent to theaters. So you're watching something that has been copied at least twice.

Commercial theaters are all digital now. They don't even have film projectors anymore. Some independent or "revival" cinemas might still have them.

[markdown]

> As a kid who grew up in 90’s I would say it is easily better than what cinema had back then.

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.

[symfoniq]

As a huge film buff, I sadly agree. And theaters in my area aren’t doing a good job keeping their projection technology current. When we went to see “Wicked”, my wife leaned over and whispered that it would probably look better on our 77” OLED, and she was absolutely right. The theater image was dark and lacked vibrant color.