Hollywood, Apple Said to Mull Rental Plan, Defying Theaters

Just a sidenote, I can rent the whole local movie theater for a private showing for less than 500 bucks.

U r probably right. Likely for the folks who dont have to ask how much it costs. Usually installed in home theatres of 25 seats or less. If more, extra charge because it would be considered going commercial. Remember its a first run movie. A lot harder to get a theatre showing a major hit to rent out during the first couple of weeks. Once crowds slow down, maybe.

Its all about the "Joneses". Just if you are worth 10/20 million or more, it takes more to impress.
 
There's also a lot of movies that don't need theater like environments to get the most out of.

I doubt I need to spend a lot on an Adam Sandler movie.
 
Depends on room size and volume.

Converting a bedroom into a theater could be done cheap, converting a basement is going to cost a bit more. Still spending over 35k on stuff, especially with used JBL equipment the expense is marginalized, build your own subwoofers and it got a lot cheaper.

There's nothing magical about what equipment a theater uses, they just use a lot more of it because of the bigger room. What they do that most don't know about is professional level EQ. It's not as simple as buying some over priced pre-processor and some more over priced amplifiers. If you don't EQ your room forget about theater like quality.

It's exactly the opposite. The smaller the room the harder it is to get a really good sound.

Theaters use large horn loaded compression drivers that produce high directivity. In a home cinema there's no space for that. Omnidirectional speakers + regular untreated room = mess.
 
I can't go to any cinema because I find the volume is always way too loud for me. It's kind of weird and it's not like I have some super hearing but even if it's not a 120% distorted mess, I still find it uncomfortably loud.
 
It's exactly the opposite. The smaller the room the harder it is to get a really good sound.

Theaters use large horn loaded compression drivers that produce high directivity. In a home cinema there's no space for that. Omnidirectional speakers + regular untreated room = mess.
While I agree that untreated rooms are a mess I disagree completely about the horns.

They made room sized horns that work well in small spaces, Klipsch does this and many others. Also just because it's a large doesn't mean a small room won't work, it's just over kill.
 
While I agree that untreated rooms are a mess I disagree completely about the horns.

They made room sized horns that work well in small spaces, Klipsch does this and many others. Also just because it's a large doesn't mean a small room won't work, it's just over kill.

No, a small room brings multiple problems to the equation. Early reflections, room modes move to higher frequencies, lack of space for equipment and room treatment etc. A small room is much harder to get working than a large one. Especially acoustically.

Klipsch horns can't be compared to the theaters. Klipsch uses horns from 2-5khz up where theaters use from 300hz up...
 
Actually those really nice looking theaters cost approx. $7 per seat (compared to around $3 for the regular theaters). Each theater complex usually offers 2-3 classes of seating (from 200 chairs per theater to about 30) and they are all separated. I also forgot to mention the private lounge for the higher class tickets along with normal food and drink being included in the price (similar to what's in the food courts nearby). Free refills on snacks and drinks also. Booze, beer, and steak or other foods are extra and can be ordered using a touchscreen and then brought to your area by a waiter - some of the theaters even include the higher class food and cocktails at the ultimate tiers (approx. $25 per person depending on location).

One major difference in their seating is that the chairs are not covered in cloth as they are in US theaters but are vinyl or leather - probably an easier surface to clean. Interesting enough the studies I read showed that subway seats tend not to be as filthy as theater seats or airlines - might have to do with the same coverings (smooth versus cloth).

The big thing about them is that with a hospitable environment it makes you want to go see a movie. Private lounge/waiting area, large open areas well lit up and exciting to look at in the front, food and drinks included at the higher tiers, clean environment? If someone did that here then sign me up.



Yeah, having to work around a theater's schedule along with driving there, seeing the movie, and returning home is a definite disadvantage when you could just instead buy it and see it when it suits you.

As I recall I mostly stopped going to theaters for the reasons I mentioned but perhaps many years ago going to rent movies for $1 per night from Blockbuster/Hollywood Video really just made it not worthwhile to spend the extra money for a movie ticket. 9 movies versus seeing 1 for the same price? No contest.

Damn, here in Wash DC you can't even find any theater for less than $10 and it's just regular seats. 3D movies are $13-14 in those same seats. Generally for me it's just overall time and inconvenience that is a biggest issue not the cost. I also could care less about seeing these movies on day one, no problem at all waiting for a BD. Once I'm done with my 100" HT I don't think we will ever go to a theater again.
 
There's also a lot of movies that don't need theater like environments to get the most out of.

I doubt I need to spend a lot on an Adam Sandler movie.

This is exactly what my wife and I do. Guardians of the Galaxy 2? We're going IMAX. John Wick 2? In theater for sure. Kevin Hart "Let Me Explain"? Wait for Netflix or Redbox.
 
I think that's also a big problem - very few movies are actually worthwhile to see in a theater. I went to the IMAX Miramar in Taipei and it was pretty stunning - for some reason the layout and position of the seats was much better than the ones I went to in the US.

I'm on the fence about whether or not I'll go see the 3D release of T2 when it comes out in a few days.
 
Yessir a calibrated mic, and some Windows software which has a name that has escaped my brain on a laptop at home.
I use REW, you might be too. Very powerful software for being free.
I use a UMIK with mine
 
Klipsch horns can't be compared to the theaters. Klipsch uses horns from 2-5khz up where theaters use from 300hz up...

Only in klipsch consumer stuff.

I've used midrange horns that cross at 300 but I've never seen or heard of a horn that can cover 300hz to 15k+. Do you have a name for such a horn?
 
I use REW, you might be too. Very powerful software for being free.
I use a UMIK with mine

That's the stuff. I kept mixing it up in my mind with WinISD. I'm planning a build of a couple of mid-bass modules to power with my iNuke 3000DSP and kept getting everything jumbled in my brain. Too many damn part numbers, pieces of software, and specifications to keep straight in my head.

Right now my I'm running all SVS. Ultra bookshelves/center for LCR, Elevations for heights, a PC-2000 sub, and Satellites for rears. The MBMs are the first step into potentially rebuilding with all DIY. I have a pretty good sized room to play with. It's something 15x25 but it's got pitched ceilings.
 
That's the stuff. I kept mixing it up in my mind with WinISD. I'm planning a build of a couple of mid-bass modules to power with my iNuke 3000DSP and kept getting everything jumbled in my brain. Too many damn part numbers, pieces of software, and specifications to keep straight in my head.

Right now my I'm running all SVS. Ultra bookshelves/center for LCR, Elevations for heights, a PC-2000 sub, and Satellites for rears. The MBMs are the first step into potentially rebuilding with all DIY. I have a pretty good sized room to play with. It's something 15x25 but it's got pitched ceilings.
I'm not familiar with pitches ceilings?

I built some MBM's for a few reasons, the biggest was because they sound amazing for music. They can be greate for HT too but I'll probably turn them into full range towers at a later date.

I love DIY, with some elbow grease you can save a ton of money. With some ingenuity you can also make them look good!
 
I'm not familiar with pitches ceilings?

I built some MBM's for a few reasons, the biggest was because they sound amazing for music. They can be greate for HT too but I'll probably turn them into full range towers at a later date.

I love DIY, with some elbow grease you can save a ton of money. With some ingenuity you can also make them look good!

Pitched just means there's an angle, no idea why I chose that word instead of angled :D . I've got an AT screen so looks aren't a priority, but sound certainly is. If they sound like garbage but look good I'll be rebuilding. If they sound great but look like garbage they'll be hidden so I couldn't care less.

I'm excited to get my hands dirty, but that comes after reading/tweaking/modeling/tweaking/modeling/designing/tweaking/designing/reading/reading/reading. Sprinkle in some tears throughout the process and eventually I'll have a couple of speakers built.
 
Pitched just means there's an angle, no idea why I chose that word instead of angled :D . I've got an AT screen so looks aren't a priority, but sound certainly is. If they sound like garbage but look good I'll be rebuilding. If they sound great but look like garbage they'll be hidden so I couldn't care less.

I'm excited to get my hands dirty, but that comes after reading/tweaking/modeling/tweaking/modeling/designing/tweaking/designing/reading/reading/reading. Sprinkle in some tears throughout the process and eventually I'll have a couple of speakers built.
lol the WAF won't do an AT screen, but then again she also told me she doesn't mind bare MDF (that's more me).

Welcome to the rabbit hole my friend.
 
Only in klipsch consumer stuff.

I've used midrange horns that cross at 300 but I've never seen or heard of a horn that can cover 300hz to 15k+. Do you have a name for such a horn?

Danley Sound Labs Jericho and many other models for one example... Many other manufacturers like JBL and LW speakers use horns from 500-800hz up. Those can never be used in a small room due to their physical size. A small room forces you to use a small non-directional speaker and this severely degrades the sound quality especially if you don't have the money and the space to build diffusors and limp membrane dampers for the room problems.
 
Danley Sound Labs Jericho and many other models for one example... Many other manufacturers like JBL and LW speakers use horns from 500-800hz up. Those can never be used in a small room due to their physical size. A small room forces you to use a small non-directional speaker and this severely degrades the sound quality especially if you don't have the money and the space to build diffusors and limp membrane dampers for the room problems.

Those are massive horn speakers and you don't need that to get good direction in a small room. I'm not sure why you insist that this undoable, plenty of people have done this in rooms with wave guides all the way down to 10". Also, why is everything that's small non-directional to you?
 
Found it!

Its called Prima Cinema and here is a decent writeup: http://www.businessinsider.com/what-is-prima-cinema-2016-5

They seem to still be in business ( http://www.primacinema.com/what-is-prima-cinema/ ) although I thought it was a more recent company. They have been in business since 2010/13 and the site is still up but I read somewhere that some dealers are having problems downloading movies.

$500 for 24 hours, ouch.

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I think that falls under You'd have to be better than 1% and famous enough that you don't want to show your face in a theater. I could have 100 million, and I'd still opt to go to a theater over that, but if I was rich and famous with people bugging me all the time or paparazzi following me all around, I might opt for this (assuming I couldn't go to the premier and be assured a good seat).
 
I can't go to any cinema because I find the volume is always way too loud for me. It's kind of weird and it's not like I have some super hearing but even if it's not a 120% distorted mess, I still find it uncomfortably loud.
I don't normally find that, but Dunkirk was crazy louds...as in bad for your ears loud. It was a great looking film. It was a good story, but the sound was well above reference levels. I thought itw as just my theater, but apparently it's cooked into the movie itself, because I've talked to people in other states that experienced the same thing. Most movies, I find are fine
 
This thread rocks! From people saying just wait 3 weeks after a movie comes out to go see it, to you can totally get $3 tickets from your theater, to your local stop in your 5,000 population town obviously has $100K+ equipment in each room because the one in *insert high priced area here* has that.

Can I make the joke "Did you just assume my theater?"
 
I think that falls under You'd have to be better than 1% and famous enough that you don't want to show your face in a theater. I could have 100 million, and I'd still opt to go to a theater over that, but if I was rich and famous with people bugging me all the time or paparazzi following me all around, I might opt for this (assuming I couldn't go to the premier and be assured a good seat).

Eeeh. You say toe-may-toe, I say two-mah-toe.

The 1% is a perspective in itself. Middle of the country, a million is 1%. On Manhattan island NYC, a million can be a room formally known as a closet.

I dug a little deeper and one of the reasons that "Prima Cinema" came to fruition is because it was a way for the previous way called the "Bel Air Circuit" to be one with the new tech times < if anyone gets the pun, cool>, and become the "Bel Air Digital Circuit".

The Bel Air Circuit was a way for movie execs and stars to get first run movies in their homes by the foot patrol. A guy lugged a projector and the wanted film to a 1% home. Been around since before the 60's, even earlier.

Bel Air is the 1% on steroids. 1%'ers all around.

So a $35K system that protected the movie studios rights and got the studios to sign on was an accomplishment that goes along with the exclusivity that costs $500 per 24hr view.

So you are right. Its for the multi millionaires with the want and disposable income to afford the convenience of playing a first run movie in their own homes.

Old story. Lindsay lohan had 'some-other-situation' and photogs and reporters asked folks that were close to her and frequented the same spots that she did, what they thought about her latest situation.

One guy, didn't have a lotta love for her and said, - Lindsay? Who cares? Shes only worth about - What? 40 million, so what?

Apparently 40 mil isnt enough to afford this system for some folks.

1 million isnt enough for me also, somewhere around 50 and I might consider.

....but if your neighbor next door......in Bel Air....... had one........what are the chances that you would get one too?
 
Those are massive horn speakers and you don't need that to get good direction in a small room. I'm not sure why you insist that this undoable, plenty of people have done this in rooms with wave guides all the way down to 10". Also, why is everything that's small non-directional to you?

Physics, simply. You can't get a wide band controlled directivity out of a small speaker. Wave guides and horns need to be big to go low in frequency. Same thing if speaker surface area is used for directivity - small areas are half space or omnidirectional for low-mid frequencies. So problems stack on problems in a small room. First the room is acoustically more challenging than a large room (proximity of walls and room modes are simply larger a problem the smaller the room you have). Then you can't place speakers there which would assist in negating the rooms problems. Third you can't use acoustic treatments because the small room size just doesn't allow that. Treatments take space. A lot of space if you have to attenuate the bass (which you especially need to do in a small room).

So as you see a small room is far more challenging a place to set up a really good audio system. An entry level or average is doable. But a really good one? Forget about it.
 
Well, only thing I can add to the room volume argument is my experience after moving my Tannoy M4 floorstanding speakers between rooms.

Room 1 was around 13m2. The speakers were setup at the 'long' ends of the room.
The only way I could get the large speakers to sound nicely (produce a realistic soundstage) was by placing them near the side walls, and quite far from the wall behind them. Almost halfway into the room.

Room 2 was about 32m2. This time the Tannoys were placed against the short side of the room.
The difference was such that I have had considered them completely useless in the smaller room.
It was a night and day difference. I could pump the volume up, it was loud but rich and pleasantly sounding. The front firing bass reflex tubes finally showed up and hummed along beautifully. I loved that setup.

So, after that I realized that I should have went with the M2 model while I was living in the smaller room.

The end.
 
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