Why the "New Normal" at Theaters May Mean a Premium Experience for Moviegoers

[Steve Guttag]

I've had decent results in getting baffle walls in You can sell it on the bean counters reasonably well. For starters, without it, double the power needed for every speaker behind the screen, including the subwoofers and that may mean increasing the size of the stage speakers and doubling the quantity of subwoofers, while you're at it. The baffle wall instantly improves efficiency. Then there is the fact that it helps keep theatre-to-theatre sound transfers down by limiting how much audio gets to the common exterior wall. And, really, it is just a half wall (one side isn't closed...it doesn't have to be finished since duct liner is going over it. As walls go, it is on the "cheap" side. As sound goes, it just improves things in the bass department as well as the HF department (reflections off the screen don't go bouncing off the rear wall either.

Thus far, I've yet to be forced into a "thrifty" ATMOS...thrifty ATMOS is 7.1...loads cheaper.

You are entitled to your opinions on ceiling or second-row surrounds. I've always said that ceiling speakers are the "fool's gold" of cinema sound. They are the most expensive to add and stand the least chance of impacting the sound. I'll say, in this room, cosmetically, they came out the best. They are Dolby's MA390C speakers (the eye balls) and are spaced in with the can lights so aesthetically, they don't standout nor cast odd shadows everywhere. The MA390C is adequate for ceiling surround duty...a bit wanting in bass response but what does one expect? The installer liked how they mounted and aiming was a breeze.

As for trading ceiling surrounds in for a second row of side/rear surrounds? No thanks. I find that brings even less to the table than ceiling surrounds. I'm content to settle on Dolby ATMOS for my "immersive" sound format. It is the best thought out that I've personally heard. I only wish they held the line on the design so that there would be uniformity to what it means to have ATMOS. Too many people have come away from an ATMOS experience only to say words to the effect of "What's the big deal?" What's more foolish? Spending nearly $100K on something that people notice as superior (presuming a good mix) or spending $50-75K on a substandard more-than 7.1 system that nobody can tell the difference and will likely not pay a premium to experience?

I come back to ... do it or don't.

[Marcel Birgelen]

ATMOS should, technically, work with almost any speaker layout. The second row of surround speakers doesn't need to have the same density as the primary row, as our "spatial resolution" greatly diminishes, once you get above a certain angle. Being able to reduce the amount of speakers you need to install in or on the ceiling really reduces some major headaches, not just for new builds, but also for retrofits.

I had high hopes for IOSONO, which was acquired by BARCO at one time. IOSONO should've been able to render a wave field synthesis output from "ordinary" Open-MDA inputs. Unfortunately, BARCO discontinued their IOSONO CORE, before it even really hit the market and IOSONO seems to be split-off from BARCO again.

Edit:

You are entitled to your opinions on ceiling or second-row surrounds. I've always said that ceiling speakers are the "fool's gold" of cinema sound. They are the most expensive to add and stand the least chance of impacting the sound. I'll say, in this room, cosmetically, they came out the best. They are Dolby's MA390C speakers (the eye balls) and are spaced in with the can lights so aesthetically, they don't standout nor cast odd shadows everywhere. The MA390C is adequate for ceiling surround duty...a bit wanting in bass response but what does one expect? The installer liked how they mounted and aiming was a breeze.

You used the "recessed" mount they offer with them? I guess recessing those speakers is a great way to move them out of the projector beam and make them less visible overall, but also decreases your amount of freedom to point them at the audience.

[Steve Guttag]

No. The ceiling is not tiled. It is a bit of a historic theatre for its site and that is part of its charm and why it has a curtain.

As for reducing the density of surround speakers...I've hear the value-engineered system and I've hear the ones I've done using the proper quantity...the results are notably better using the proper quantity.

[Mike Blakesley]

Don't give up on the curtain quest!!!! Everything you said is very consistent with others and curtains. They are still worth it! And yes, they are not essential, (as has been demonstrated by your theatre since 1983). I'm guess you had a waterfall curtain, of some sort?

No our curtain was the same style shown in your picture.

The particular problem we have is, our screen is wall-to-wall (there is only about a foot of masking on each side) so the old curtain would always intrude into the picture area somewhat. I got tired of seeing the curtains invading the scope pictures so that's why we took it down in '83.

To get around that problem, when we made the quote, the system was designed to gather the curtains along the wall on each side for about 6 feet, to avoid them piling into the picture area. I'm sure that added to the cost. I think the quote was somewhere around $21.5k, if I remember right. It was from Franklin Designs, a very reputable outfit, so I'm sure the quality would have been great. (Seems like every time I've ever tried to "cheap out" on anything, it's come back later to bite me.)

Don't worry, I'm in the "never say never" column on the curtains. Maybe it will be my parting gift to this place, if in fact I ever do retire from it.

[Marcel Birgelen]

I've seen a "virtual curtain" once, it was a pretty clever pre-show movie that simulated the curtain on-screen. While it as obviously fake, it was nevertheless done with some inspiration and some work had been put into it. When the virtual curtain opened, it opened with an in-theater advert, projected onto the "virtual curtain". The transition was very well made.

Nothing beats the real thing, obviously, unless one day we get the kind of display technology that really makes them indistinguishable from the real thing...

No. The ceiling is not tiled. It is a bit of a historic theatre for its site and that is part of its charm and why it has a curtain.

As for reducing the density of surround speakers...I've hear the value-engineered system and I've hear the ones I've done using the proper quantity...the results are notably better using the proper quantity.

Keep in mind that in a traditional Dolby ATMOS install, you have less ceiling speakers as surround/wall speakers, even if you follow Dolby's guideline to match side speakers with top speakers, as you usually have more speakers on the back. It depends on your theater layout how that pans out (pun not really intended, but I feel kind-a clever anyway ) in reality...

As you noticed yourself, the ceiling speakers add the least advantage. There is a difference between "value-engineering" and "over-engineering", because there will be a point where "enough is enough" and the difference between increased spatial resolution will simply not be perceived by any human being.

Right now, I think we can safely conclude that Dolby ATMOS has won the race of the first iteration of immersive sound systems. While Hollywood keeps "cranking out" movies in DTS-X and even Auro 11.1, it seems like BARCO isn't even trying to sell you any sound-related equipment anymore.

[Carsten Kurz]

I know of one medium-sized chain that uses Chamberlain garage door openers, of the sort you can buy at Home Depot, as masking motor/controller units. Their engineering VP told me that he has found them to be just as accurate and resilient as purpose-designed masking motor/controllers, at around 20% of the price.

Of course the gotcha would be if you needed to have more than two presets (flat and scope, or closed and open if it was driving a garage door) - but this chain doesn't, so that isn't a problem.

Our curtain and masking motors are from 1957, and have run every day since then. Well, until last November when we had to close. The curtain itself, however, had to be replaced, the fabric became very brittle.

[Marcel Birgelen]

When it comes down to motors, it's simply important to get your specifications right. The necessary torque, power, RPMs and duty cycle. If I look at the average modern-day garage door opener, those things seem to be designed to barely hang on. No wonder they tend to burn out every now and then...

[Lyle Romer]

Theatres will have to do something to differentiate themselves given that it seems all studios are using COVID as an excuse to shorten the theatrical window to 45 days maximum. That excludes the nonsensical free day and date access for some streaming platforms.

[Marcel Birgelen]

With many theaters now opening in many markets, I guess this will be the first real test for Disney's "Premier Access" strategy. Black Widow will be released day and date in theaters and on Disney+ for an additional fee of $30 or EUR 30... (I wonder if Disney's banks also account that way for the conversion between USD and EUR...).

It will be interesting to see if people are willing to fork over the $30 to Disney for a one-shot streaming experience versus seeing it in a real theater.

[Steve Guttag]

Time will tell. I've stated and predicted all along that shrinking windows (with day-and-date being the smallest window) shrinks your total pie size. Once people have a choice to see something at home, you've removed a portion of potential revenue from the theatrical release. You've lost that money, forever. There is no guarantee that you'll get a portion of that money any time soon or ever on the home release. Once in the home, there is no rush. Sure you could pay $30 for as many eyeballs as possible to see it on day-1...but what's the rush? It'll be there next week or next month or a year from now. And, if you wait long enough, it's free!!! (or included...Disney isn't into "free.")

This was already proven in the loss of the sub-run market. There used to be sub-run theatres that played movies many weeks, if not months after the break. Yes, they are still there but not in the numbers there used to be. Shrinking the window killed that market and flushed that revenue. People like to go out and sub run theatres offered the ability to do so at a thrifty price that still benefited the theatre and the studio. Instead, that money is just lost, as is the practice of more people going to the movies.

"Cruella" already had "disappointing" numbers. There can be any one of a number of reasons for that (movies are not fungible). However, I guarantee you that Disney lost money by having a day-and-date home movie release. There is no real financial incentive to put a movie in the home, quite the opposite. What you get with a day-and-day is the immediacy of capturing some home market, but at the expense of theatrical. You are still going to get the home market if you release it there today, next month or next year. There is no rush. Delaying a movie to the home for a year (or more even) doesn't deny the home theatre person content...they still get it. it isn't an either/or...it is just time shifted. Unless the movie is very topical, there really isn't a penalty to releasing a title awhile after theatrical.

2020 has shown that movies not released to the home don't go stale on the shelf. The easiest way to make a movie stale is to release it to the home market.

[Bobby Henderson]

It would be interesting to see the financials on what these day-and-date movies are earning in the home market. I'll bet it's a far cry from when the DVD format was hitting its peak in the early 2000's.

The movie studios allowed streaming to cannibalize much of the retail movie disc market. Video rental stores have disappeared from most parts of the nation. Our last video rental store in my town finally closed last year. Obviously you can still buy movies on DVD, Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray formats. But the major studios typically put very little effort into the products anymore; they're mostly bare bones affairs, unless you count a bunch of commercials that try to auto-play when the disc loads as "extras." Boutique outfits such as Shout Factory are the only ones doing a good job of making retail movie discs anymore. I don't know the numbers, but I expect this situation has had a pretty negative effect on home theater product sales. Big TV screens are still popular. Surround sound systems? Not so much.

I strongly doubt the movie studios are pulling in anywhere near as much money with streaming. It kind of looks like Disney and Warner Bros are using their movie releases as loss leaders to sell subscriptions to Disney+ and HBO Max. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video do far more to hype TV series than movies on their services.

With all that said, I can't understand the continued obsession from major Hollywood studios with getting their movies on TV screens as soon as possible. Considering all that has been lost in the home video market it would seem more logical to try to squeeze a lot more out of a theatrical release. One way to do that is extending the theatrical window.

If the movie studios want to keep going the same direction they're going to force a lot of theaters out of business. And then the studios will be stuck making TV shows. Not big budget movies made for TV. Just TV shows. That's where the path they're on ends.

[Lyle Romer]

It would be interesting to see the financials on what these day-and-date movies are earning in the home market. I'll bet it's a far cry from when the DVD format was hitting its peak in the early 2000's.

The movie studios allowed streaming to cannibalize much of the retail movie disc market. Video rental stores have disappeared from most parts of the nation. Our last video rental store in my town finally closed last year. Obviously you can still buy movies on DVD, Blu-ray and UHD Blu-ray formats. But the major studios typically put very little effort into the products anymore; they're mostly bare bones affairs, unless you count a bunch of commercials that try to auto-play when the disc loads as "extras." Boutique outfits such as Shout Factory are the only ones doing a good job of making retail movie discs anymore. I don't know the numbers, but I expect this situation has had a pretty negative effect on home theater product sales. Big TV screens are still popular. Surround sound systems? Not so much.

I strongly doubt the movie studios are pulling in anywhere near as much money with streaming. It kind of looks like Disney and Warner Bros are using their movie releases as loss leaders to sell subscriptions to Disney+ and HBO Max. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video do far more to hype TV series than movies on their services.

With all that said, I can't understand the continued obsession from major Hollywood studios with getting their movies on TV screens as soon as possible. Considering all that has been lost in the home video market it would seem more logical to try to squeeze a lot more out of a theatrical release. One way to do that is extending the theatrical window.

If the movie studios want to keep going the same direction they're going to force a lot of theaters out of business. And then the studios will be stuck making TV shows. Not big budget movies made for TV. Just TV shows. That's where the path they're on ends.

Agree 100% on extending the window to increase revenue. If they want things that are basically direct to TV, just make miniseries or direct to streaming movies. Theatrical films (or digitals as the case may be) should be treated as a completely different type of product and they should be made to be seen "on the big screen."

[Mike Blakesley]

I suppose you need to look at the "guaranteed" income they make from streaming. Disney for example has about 75 million subscribers, paying (I think) 7.99 a month. So from that little cash cow alone, they are earning over half a billion dollars a month. That's not counting whatever money they make from charging $30 to play the latest new movie before it grows hair. They could go for two months, release NO new content and still make over a billion dollars most of which would be profit! The big trick is to keep just enough new stuff coming to avoid too many people UNsubscribing. There's no sense in releasing too much stuff, or even too much GOOD stuff. If they ever see subscriber numbers dwindling, all they have to do is come out with a new Star Wars series or something like that and watch the numbers go back up.

Netflix probably has a little more of a problem -- they don't have the "classic" catalog that Disney has, they don't charge for "premium" content, and they don't own any major franchises either, so they are much more tied to shoveling tons of new content onto the fire and winning those Oscars, Globes, Emmys, People's Choice or what-have-you. They're already seeing their growth shrinking because of all the competition they now have -- people are going to start trimming streaming services once they realize they're paying far more for TV than they used to be. But they're still pulling in a billion dollars or so every single month.

So it's going to become an ongoing financial game, where people drop one service (because they hardly ever watch it) and then that service starts sending them promotional offers begging them to come back, or comes out with a new movie starring James Bond or Superman or Luke Skywalker or whatever the newest thing-of-the-week is, and the process will repeat with any other service that doesn't keep them happy.

[Bobby Henderson]

Does Disney post any numbers on how many pony up $30 for advance access to one of their movies? I'd bet whatever that number might be likely wouldn't compare very well to how many people were buying DVDs back in the 2000's.

Disney and HBO Max both have tens of millions of subscribers. But the money Disney and Warner Bros are supposedly gaining from those subscriptions isn't all profit. Both have to produce a steady stream of new movies, TV series and other kinds of stream-able content. The revenues they're gaining from subscriptions are making a negative dent in revenue coming from theatrical box office sales and home video sales (both physical discs and "digital" sales).

HBO has announced that starting in 2022 they'll no longer release movies in theaters and on HBO MAX simultaneously. There was some confusion about the re-make of Dune, due to be released October 1, whether it would get an exclusive theatrical window. But Warner Bros is sticking to a day-and-date release via HBO Max. The movie's director, Denis Villeneuve, has been publicly critical about the lack of a theatrical window, saying Warner Bros is going to kill the Dune franchise just to bait more subscribers. The upcoming movie adapts just the first half of Frank Herbert's novel, so at least one follow-up installment would be expected. If Dune tanks at theaters (which is possible) that follow-up movie might not get made.

Netflix still has far more subscribers than any other streaming service. I don't know the breakdown of it, but to me it sure looks like Netflix puts a lot more into original series TV content than it does with movies. Even Amazon does more to push series TV than it does movies. Viewers have to keep watching longer and subscribing longer when they get vested in a series. Movies are watch it once and you're done kinds of things, especially today with the Save the Cat bible formula still being applied to so many of them.

I think the best bet for movies is shoring up the theatrical release platform and extending the exclusive window weeks if not months longer. Going the other direction with little to no window at all could lead to hundreds or even thousands of theater locations closing for good. Without the theatrical platform a traditional 2 hour movie will just be a TV show trying to compete against a lot of series productions on the same platform.

[Mike Blakesley]

Does Disney post any numbers on how many pony up $30 for advance access to one of their movies?

No. All they do is, when any media outlet asks them how something did, they give a vague platitude like "it went beyond our expectations" or "we're very pleased with the results so far" and that kind of stuff.

In the new world, everything is a smash hit. They don't have to deal with the Monday morning numbers where their $200 million movie is declared a flop because it "only" made $90 million on opening weekend when all the experts were expecting 120.

They're probably loving this new normal.