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Paradigm Shift Imminent?


Mallette

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Still, as was also already alluded to, I still think there will still be movie theaters of some form around.

Fully agree...but less of them and they will have to deliver things one cannot get at home. Just big, bright pictures and surround sound isn't going to do it anymore as these are easily available at home.

Dave

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Going to a cinema is not just about a visual and audio experience that you can now duplicate at home, it's about the collective experience of sharing something with a large number of people enjoying the same thing, which can intensify the experience, as other posters have mentioned.

As well, it's usually an occasion of taking someone out for the evening. No matter how good your home theatre is, an evening on the sofa comes in second to going out for a date. Pizza and a video on the sofa is not dinner and a movie.

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The theater industry isn't going to just roll over and die, it will do as it has every decade or so since the shift from live performance to film and adapt.

Its easy to presume that theater as we experience it ourselves for the last few years is "the way" theaters are, but if you look into it a bit you will see there are a very wide range of practices. Many places have dead malls with fairly nice theaters showing end of run movies cheap, real cheap.

Theaters are going to digital distribution, no aging spliced film and related costs, plus instant cheap delivery via the internet. This makes it practical to show a program as little as once to even a small audience. Suppose you could for a low subscription fee download and watch your favorite show at home, OR attend a regular weekly showing in a theater?

Another part of digital distribution is that equipment costs scale over a VERY wide range. On the very low end a decent laptop PC, a video projector, and a typical DJ level sound system and a place to set it up, even a tent at a swap meet, and you have a theater.

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Going to a cinema is not just about a visual and audio experience that you can now duplicate at home, it's about the collective experience of sharing something with a large number of people enjoying the same thing, which can intensify the experience, as other posters have mentioned.

You're the first I've noticed mentioning that, and it's something I never have considered. I've always considered the people in front of me in line, talking behind me, and in the view up front as major annoyances.

I don't consider either watching TV or going to the movies a social event, but that's just me.

But then I am not much for crowds of any kind...

Anyway, the major point I made orginally had little to do with theaters and was more directed at the business of production itself. The time between the release of a film in theaters and its appearance on other media has constantly decreased ove the past couple of decades. My predictions are really already pretty close to reality.

Comcast or one of the others...not sure which...will be offering movies simultaneously with their theatrical release for 30.00 this year. I certainly won't pay that, but many will and the price will drop as more and more do as well. I don't think one has to be prescient to see that there will be a sliding scale based on demand such that the price drops over time until it's free.

Dave

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  • 5 weeks later...

Dave, curious on your thoughts about the OLEDs...

Certainly on paper the field of the future. Whole rooms papered floor and cieling with them. Seriously.

They, combined with the XBox Konnect of the near future, point the way to the holodeck.

Looking forward to a real newspaper sized one with a real newspaper on it...

Yeah, big dreams...but no technological reason why it won't head that way in the not too distant future.

Dave

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in one of my lucid moments, i nailed my paradigm to the floor so it wouldn't shift like the rest of them. Smile

Me I prefer Klipsch over Paradigm......and I HATE "lucid moments" they scare me !

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Thinking of the future brings me back to think of the past and stories from my Grandmother who was a music teacher and loved playing the blues on the piano. She grew up in Courtland, Kansas but I'm not sure if that is where she got her first job. When she was young she was paid a quarter a show to accompany the silent movies. She played the piano using sheet music that came with the films. I guess she really earned her money with "Ten Commandments" (1923) which lasted over 2 hours. She recalled more than once becoming a little too engrossed in the movies and forget to play. The manager would walk down to her piano and tell her "a little music might be nice!"

For her trouble she got a pair of dimes AND a nickel !

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