Theatre queues film from Amazon Prime on Screen for audience to see

[Rusty Gordon]

A movie theater allegedly using an Amazon Prime account to show films has gone viral on TikTok, racking up over 2 million views. Users have weighed in on the legality, as well as the humor, of cinema chains being trapped in the streaming wars.

In the original video, @rachel.m00re shows a dark theater ready for a viewing. But instead of previews playing, there’s a Prime Video homepage.

Users watch as someone in control of the screen navigates past banners for Amazon’s newest releases like Being the Ricardos.

“We’re going to be watching this on an old app?” says one movie goer. “Are you kidding me?”

Patrons then watch an employee select letters in the search bar, looking for the 2018 animated version of The Grinch. When the movie is finally selected, an error message occurs.

A screen saying “Maximum videos playing” is shown, indicating that the account is being used to support too many viewings at once. The crowd sounds disappointed, but many can be heard laughing at the situation.

It's unclear where this incident took place. Amazon and @rachel.m00re did not immediately return the Daily Dot’s request for comment.

[Martin Brooks]

How could they possibly get away with this, especially now that it's been publicized.

[William Kucharski]

Two things I've seen:

1) A "DVD Video" icon bouncing around the screen before a show; some studios do send out old content on disc.

My local film society showed Hello Dolly from DVD, they couldn't even bother with the Blu-ray. Nothing like watching upsampling artifacts for the entire film.

2) Before Sony made a Blu-ray available MoD, the local Landmark theater ran Real Genius, and every fifteen minutes a "HDNet Movies" bug would come up in the lower right.

Yep, played back from a DVR recording of a cable showing.

Of course every time the show ends at the local AMC Dolby Cinema you get to see the Windows Start button appear in the task bar at the bottom of the screen.

[Mike Blakesley]

I suppose it's possible that they licensed the movie but wanted to use the Fire Stick to play it, just to save time. But to let the audience see those shenanigans is unforgiveable. They should have their movie theater license revoked.

[Randy Stankey]

Aside from the questions of legality and ethics, I have two other questions...

Dowser?

Mute button?

You don't need a fancy seamless switcher. It would be nice to have but not necessary.
You don't need a preview display in the booth. Again, nice but not necessary.

It would be super easy to manually mute the sound and shut the dowser then put a piece of white poster board in front of the lens.
Open the dowser again so that you can see your menu screens in order to select the program you want, projected on the cardboard. The image doesn't have to be perfectly clear as long as you can see well enough to select from the menus.

Then, when the program starts and the first studio logo hits the screen, quickly pull the cardboard and hit the mute button.
You have a show start that's almost as clean as if you did it with the projector's automation. You didn't have to do much extra work. You only had to take about thirty seconds of extra time to get coordinated.

So what if you bobble the change or fumble the mute button a little? Stuff like that sometimes happens even WITH automation. The system misses a cue or some other setting is off when you don't notice it. Shit happens. An audience will accept small mistakes if the rest of the show goes off without another hitch.

Allowing the audience to see menus on the screen is unconscionable! Movies are supposed to happen as if by magic! Visible menus spoils the illusion.
Even movie theater people like us, who are up to their elbows in movie technology every day, STILL want to pretend that movies happen by magic.

To be honest, it's practically the only thing that movie theaters have left! Customers sit down in a comfy chair, eat their popcorn, lean back, relax and watch without having to lift so much as a finger.

Now, we've got some chucklehead who thinks it's okay to spoil the customers' experience...that they PAID FOR...by letting the audience see through the veil?

You can't just holler, "PAY NO ATTENTION TO THAT MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN!"

Yes! It really is as disappointing and disillusioning as that scene where Dorothy, the Tin Man, the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion discovered that the Oz, the Great and Terrible was really just a humbug!

I agree. That theater should lose its license, have its contracts cancelled and, maybe, have to pay some fines.

At minimum, they should be shuttered for a month or two... Just long enough for all of their perishable food to expire.

And, before they are allowed to reopen, a Health Department inspector should have to check to be sure that all expired food has been replaced.
And, every popcorn machine is hospital-clean...every hotdog cooker is up to temperature...every soda dispenser and ice bin has been sanitized to within an inch of its life...and they are not allowed to reopen until every last nit-picking, tittle and jot of the Health Code has been checked off, clean.

[William Kucharski]

That would require presentation standards, which few chains other than Alamo Drafthouse even give lip service to anymore.

Only historical theaters specializing in such seem to care, and I've heard more than once that the execs at AMC and Regal point to the death of ArcLight as "proof" that focusing on presentation and quality is a losing proposition.

Since customers seem to behave as if a theater is no different than watching a movie in their living room, theatres see no reason to disagree, thus the now common practice of showing scope features letterboxed on a flat screen, running bulbs until they die rather than fall below light output standards, and only recalibrating projectors when enough people complain.

One local AMC had their audio misconfigured in one house (center channel audio came out the left front) for months; it was only when a Fathom presentation of an old mono film made the issue obvious when they had to refund most of an audience (you could stay or get a refund; even then many stayed) that they took action.

[Geoff Jones]

One local AMC had their audio misconfigured in one house (center channel audio came out the left front) for months; it was only when a Fathom presentation of an old mono film made the issue obvious when they had to refund most of an audience (you could stay or get a refund; even then many stayed) that they took action.

What theater was this? And did they really fix it? If so, color me astonished.


I had the same problem at the AMC Orchard 12 in Westminster, CO in 2019, except the Right channel was swapped for the Center. Here's my Google review:

I saw A L I E N here on 10/15 in Auditorium 12.

*Something* was wrong with the audio. I'm 95% sure the right and center channels were swapped. Most dialog came from the right side of the screen.

Red light from the aisle lights lit up the bottom corners of the screen. Are there any AMC theaters out there that *don't* have red light on their screens? So far, I haven't found one.

This auditorium features a smallish constant-width screen unfortunately, and there isn't any masking, so black bars were projected above and below the picture. (At least it wasn't cropped.)

I was excited to take my 12 year old and one of her friends to see ALIEN for the first time on "big" screen. I should have just stayed home and shown it to her on my home theater.

[Randy Stankey]

No, there is a difference between sloppy presentation and doing unscrupulous things without even trying to hide it. There is a clear line between them.

On one side of the line, you simply get reviled. When you step over the line your theater should get shut down and you should face the possibility of legal trouble.

[William Kucharski]

What theater was this? And did they really fix it? If so, color me astonished.

AMC Westminster 24.

This particular house had been like that for months, because I had gotten a refund for a showing there before.

When I saw a new screening was in the same house, I hoped they had fixed it but it was still the same. However, this time, rather than ask for a refund, I just "innocently" complained to the manager who walked over with me, and instantly heard the issue. They rebooted the sound processor and did a few other things before apologizing to the audience and offering a refund or they could stay.

I suspect the manager handing out refunds this time rather than just a popcorn-level employee escalated the issue so it actually got fixed.

When I popped back into that same house a month after that, the problem had indeed been fixed.

I have to say sound processor issues can be interesting; one time in a different house at AMC Westminster 24, all the channels were off by one - left was in center, center in right, right in right surround, etc.

That time rebooting the processor did fix the issue.

Also, somehow AMC Westminster 24 does not have the aisle lights on screen issue; AMC Flatiron Crossing is absolutely horrible about this, even in their Dolby Theater where the lower corners glow bright red.

[Geoff Jones]

AMC Westminster 24

Ah, yes. I remember seeing the LotR trilogy there maybe eight or ten years ago and noticing that no sound was coming from one of the surround channels. It was an auditorium to the left of the concession area, one of their larger screens.

After FotR, I hunted down a manager (no small feat) and asked that it be fixed.

A week later, I returned for TTT. The problem had not been fixed and it was much more noticeable during the Helm's Deep battle. It was raining all around me... except in one direction. I hunted down a manager again to request a fix, but I also called the theater over the next several days to follow up. I vaguely remember a conversation with a manager who acknowledged with some degree of obvious reluctance that I was correct.

It was finally fixed for RotK.


AMC theaters: Working hard to convince anyone who cares about presentation to give up and watch at home.

[Leo Enticknap]

Arthouse, rep, and mainstream houses doing private rental shows play legally licensed content from BDs all the time, so it wouldn't surprise me if they are now doing the same thing from streaming services. As others have noted, doing that does not give you an excuse for sloppy technical presentation - a preview monitor and scaler/switcher, ideally with a video mute function, would be essential to avoid Amazon Slime menu screens and whatnot from appearing on the big screen. You should also preview the content to note the timecode at which the credit crawl starts, the final screen, etc., in order to do manual presentation functions (lights, tabs, etc.) elegantly.

My worry with this route would be reliability. At least with a BD, all the audio and video data is physically in your booth, and the only real risk is a breakdown of the equipment (also a risk with a DCP server and media block). With streaming, however, it isn't. If your Internet connection goes out halfway through the movie, or there is a problem at Amazon's end, or anywhere in between, you're buggered.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

To my knowlefge, no one I serviced has ever done that. But they do occasionally play Blue Rays, properly liscensed and all. The last stuff they played were Tue old Ghostbusters movies.

[Randy Stankey]

I'm okay with playing movies from Blu-Ray...relucantly...begrudgingly... I've done it.

I've even played movies from a streaming box but the program was stored on a local hard drive, specially installed for the purpose, attached to the local computer network. The streaming box was specially designed for the purpose, too. The box was a standalone device that did all the work. You only needed a computer on the same network to control it. It did the job it was supposed to do and it did it comparatively well.

In one case, I did have a seamless switcher. In the other, I just blacked out the screen until I heard the first sound from the opening logo. It wasn't as pretty as I would have liked but it did the job it needed to do and the veil of illusion wasn't broken. (Maybe a wrinkle or two. Nothing more troubling than a glitch in the Matrix. )

Method or technique isn't necessarily my problem. Neither is an otherwise sloppy or shoddy presentation. Your customers will eventually let you know that your presentation is bad by not showing up, anymore.

Not only is showing a movie from a consumer grade streaming appliance illegal and/or in violation of your contracts, letting menus appear on-screen shows that you just don't give a flying frogleap about your customers. You'll take their money but, after that, it's like telling people to bend over and grab their ankles!

Let's just face it. Playing a movie through a commercial grade projector, via an in-house CMS/server system IS the same as using a streaming box. It's just bigger, more complicated and more expensive but it is purpose-built for the job it needs to do.

Frankly, I don't go to the movies very much, anymore because, I don't want to see a video, the same quality as I can get at home and I can do it without having to deal with the mouth-breathing idots that most theaters call "employees," these days, let alone the slobbering cretins they call "customers."

But, at least, if they use a DCP system (properly installed and calibrated) they'll use some lube after I give them my $50 for the privilege of getting fucked up the ass!

[Marcel Birgelen]

For some private showings, we've played content from Netflix, but people were informed that it was sourced from Netflix and that we were entirely dependent on the availability of the service and that the quality would not be comparable to proper DCP content or even BluRays. In this case, it was a test, it was private, it had blessings from Netflix and still, we did everything to keep the bloody menus off-screen...

Still, I would NEVER play such a thing for a paying, general audience, not even with the menus properly kept off-screen:

- What about presentation standards? Are you really going to feed your audience some random stream with unknown quality? Completely unacceptable.
- What about reliability? Services like Netflix and Amazon Prime regularly face outages, as do many ISP services, do you want to make your show dependent on such factors?
- What about automation and efficiency? Wasn't the "nice thing" about digital cinema that we essentially didn't need a projectionist in every booth to start the show?

So, what's next? Somebody in the audience gets thrown a remote and he/she decides what the rest watches?

[Randy Stankey]

Wouldn't it be funny if somebody hacked into the theater's network and took control of the FireStick?

One minute, a theater full of moms and kids are watching the latest Disney feature. The next, it's Debbie Does Dallas!