| Editorial September 2009
A Life-Changing Experience
 Friends and family predicted that
married life would change me. It didn’t. Then they said that having a child would
change me even more. Nothing. In fact, other than my being a little older, people tell me
that I’m pretty much the same as I’ve ever been.
On the other hand, I never quite expected the changes that
occurred when, last year, I installed a projector-based home-theater system in my house,
which I wrote about last August. When I first got
the theater set up, everyone in my family was pretty impressed. My wife liked the idea of
watching movies in a theater-style setting at home because, with a young child, it was
trouble for her to get to the theater. My son was thrilled to see, upstairs on the new
105" theater screen, Lightning McQueen of Cars almost three times the size
he’d been on the 40" screen downstairs in the family room. His favorite movie
hero had become larger than life. These were obviously benefits for them, but offered
something more to me that I’d never expected -- it completely changed the way I enjoy
movies, which are a big part of my life.
Before installing this home theater, I saw about four
movies a week, usually at a multiplex cinema a few miles away. I used to really like going
there because, before my home theater, the quality was much better than anything I had at
home. Now I rarely see more than four films in a theater per month. There are a few
reasons for this, the first one obviously being convenience, which is what my wife likes.
Walking up a flight of stairs is a lot more quick and easy than getting in the car to
drive somewhere else.
Another not-so-obvious reason has to do with what’s
playing at the movie theaters -- or, more accurately, what’s not playing.
Really bad movies like Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen take up multiple screens
at many theaters, while outstanding movies such as the recently released The Hurt
Locker, which I saw last night -- I think it’s one of the year’s best so far
-- are released to only a few theaters and are becoming increasingly hard to find.  Then
there are movies that make it to no theaters at all, or as few as makes no difference. One
such is Killshot, which I saw a few weeks ago at home. It isn’t of the caliber
of The Hurt Locker, but it’s better than most of what’s playing in the
theaters in any given week -- far better than Transformers or G.I. Joe: The Rise
of Cobra, another biggie right now. As far as I know, Killshot wasn’t
theatrically released anywhere in my city -- in fact, it was released to a grand total of
only five theaters in the entire US. Therefore, almost the only theater I could see it in is
my own. For someone who’s into seeing good new movies, a home theater is not only
a luxury, it’s a must.
Then there’s the quality of presentation that can be
had at home these days, which is why I didn’t get a home theater for so long.
Nowadays, it can rival or even surpass the big theaters, and at surprisingly low cost.
When I watched The Hurt Locker at the multiplex, the slightly-out-of-focus image
was distracting, and the muffled sound made the dialogue sometimes difficult to
understand. I wished I was at home, where the image is sharp and the sound clean. I
don’t know how much the projector and screen at that theater cost, but mine cost less
than five grand, and look better with a Blu-ray source than theirs do projecting real
film. It’s mind-boggling how little great home-theater equipment costs these days.
Not every commercial cinema is inferior to my home theater.
Some still boast outstanding video and image quality, and I’d still prefer to watch
more movies in them, if only there weren’t so many other irritants for the
serious moviegoer: people who talk to their neighbors while the movie is playing;
cell-phone users who talk or text during the show, either interrupting your concentration
with their voices or annoying you with their phones’ bright displays; tall people who
sit directly in front of you and obstruct your view, often young guys who keep their caps
on; and people who sit behind and continuously tap their toes against the back of your
seat. If some tall, loud-talking, cell-phone-wielding person wearing hard-toed shoes nears
your seat, you might as well get up and go home. There’s no question that the comfort
level of my own home theater, particularly with its soft recliner seats -- a theater that
opens its doors only to family and friends -- is far superior to most theaters today.
When I first set up my theater, I thought it would be a
pretty cool thing for me and my family to have. It’s turned out to be so much more. A
great home theater can have a tremendous impact on the quantity and quality of the movies
you watch, and it can provide a high quality of viewing experience that, all told, can
change your notions about what’s the best way to watch movies. Only a few years ago,
I never thought I’d say this: Given the choice to see a movie at a commercial cinema
or in my home theater, I’ll take my own setup, hands down. And when the day comes
that first-run films are available for download on the same day and date as their
theatrical release (trust me, it’ll come), I’ll have no reason at all to go
back.
When they marry and have children, many people’s lives
change drastically -- to the point that they look for any excuse to get out of the house.
Marriage and children didn’t change me much, but my new home theater did -- it
actually gave me an excuse to stay home. No one -- I least of all -- ever predicted
that.
. . . Doug Schneider
das@hometheatersound.com |
