IMHO, comfortable high-back seats with cupholders, lots of legroom, and good sightlines can just as easily be done in a conventional sloped floor theatre.

Don't forget the poor position of the projection port causing peoples heads and hands to get in the picture when they stand up in the back.

They are also beginning to plan what to do with reclaimed booth space after digital cinema takes over. In some places, they're talking about installing a balcony where the booth was!

In our state there is a new building code that prohibits the building of a balcony in new theater complexes.

You should have seen the crap that they had to go thru just to get the stadium seating approved.

I like stadium seating. Although, with all the new branded theatres using them, it seems like a new standard.

You can always hear the projectors and booth noises and you get use to people blocking the image during the show.

Stadium Seating, though, turns up images of freezing at the stadium or ball park, in uncomfortable, plastic seats.

In my opinion, the perfect auditorium seating would be Airplane Seating.

Airplane Seating would have staggerred rows, with incredibly comfy seats on not so steep steps, cupholder armrests and plenty of leg room (48 inches back-2-back) with better aisle lighting. It would also have railings up the stairs to the very back and front of the auditorium.

------------------
Andrew McCrea

"I'm Not Bad, I'm Just Drawn That Way!" - Jessica Rabbit

LOL Now there is an oxymoron if I ever saw one. I think there used to be comfortable airline seats in DC-3s until about 1960.

Sloped floors can have breaks or channels to keep spills from going all the way to the front. Dirt roads have something similar called "water bars" to keep streams from following ruts and washing out the road.

Slipping out of a seat is caused by the cant being set improperly. Seat standards are designed for a particular slope. If the installer doesn't use the correct standard for the slope, or old seats are recycled to a different auditorium, customers can slip out of the seats or be jammed into the back.

One thing about Airplane Seating, we'd never be sold-out; if we use the sizes and spacing they do on planes, we could easily fit at least 600 airplane seats into our now-214 seat house.

Result? One crappy sight line that make the back rows practically useless unless the sreen up in God's Country, which in turn makes the front rows practically useless.

With the codes in this state, striking a happy medium is almost (if not) impossible.