alt Hacker NewsThe reasoning doesn't particularly matter to me, honestly. Whether or not it they need to charge a second mortgage to cover the cost of the theater isn't really my problem; these are for-profit companies, I don't need to do them any favor.
Popcorn cost basically nothing to make at home, especially if you buy the raw kernels and pop them yourself, and I can rent a 4k version of a movie for like three dollars on Amazon. My 85" 8k TV cost me $1200 (refurbished, but still). For the cost of going to the theater with my wife 15 times, I can buy that TV to watch movies but also use that same TV for many other things.
Even cheap shitty TVs are pretty ok nowadays, certainly better than the stuff when I was a kid, and after I have to question the point of going to an expensive physical theater where there's a risk of some teenagers talking over the movie and I can't pause if I need to use the bathroom. The theaters might not like it, but regardless of whether its fair, they are competing with TVs now.
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I've had the same thoughts, also I sure don't miss the theater experience of having your shoes sticky with soda. God forbid you drop something on the floor like your phone, and have to feel around for it in the dark.
The last time I went to a theater, I went to the first showing of the movie for the day. We were the only people in the theater. 30 minutes into the movie, the projection suddenly shut off and all the lights turned on. After sitting there for about 10 minutes, we went out to talk to a staff member about it, and they told us that the computer said there was no one in the theater so they should shut it off. Long story short, they did not end up turning it back on, and referred us to the customer support hotline to try and get our money back. And this might be a little ageist, but there's something infuriating about a condescending teenager acting like this is somehow our fault. Yeah, no thank you.
Everyone I know with an Espresso machine still goes to coffee shops. Beer is cheaper from a super market but everyone I know prefers pubs. For some reason this does not hold with cinemas. I way prefer the escapism of the cinema to sitting in my house surrounded by my usual ambient domestic Todo list. Sure I have a very good oled, amazing surround sound, but I'd take the cinema every time. But I can't due to kids.
However, I'm the outlier, none of my friends prefer the cinema. No idea why.