CurtPalme.com Home Theater Forum

[perisoft]

It's been a while since I've been in a normal theater, with film and popcorn and stuff. But I'm down in NYC at our apartment here to see my wife for xmas, and there's no HT here. What's a guy to do?

I've got my 'real' HT partially set up at home now - temporary screen in place, barco hung, speakers mostly set up right. So I figured it'd be interesting to go to a good 'real' theater and see how the experience compares after a few movies at home.

So, we went to the Regal at Union Square to see The Golden Compass, as we're both into sci-fi/fantasy stuff. It's also a fairly good way to test a theater.

The 14th street Regal is a pretty good theater as theaters go - stadium seating, and everything is pretty high end as it has to be in lower Manhattan. And as it better be at $13 a pop for a 4pm show... So without further ado, a comparison:

There are several aspects to the theater experience. Fortunately, none of them have anything to do with the actual film being presented - which is secondary, if not tertiary or quaternary, or even.. fithernary, or whatever.

The things that do matter, though, are presented here, with comparisons between my current busted-ass HT and a mega googol yowzaplex in the heart of Manhattan.

SEATING

THEATER:

Pro: The seats themselves were great - I didn't notice they were there at all, which is really the ideal. The seats were hard to argue with - cupholders, natch, and a neat kind of sunken console alternating with the cupholders which resulted in an effective kind of popcorn bag trough between me and my wife. Since I once managed to drop a gargantuan 'medium' popcorn from between my knees, thus eliminating the evening's foodertainment, she has since mistrusted my ability to retain containers. That was a nice touch.

Con: To get a good seat, we had to get there pretty early. Sometimes that hasn't been possible, and we've ended up in the front row, necks craned back, staring skyward with every vertical pan creating a kind of imax-shuttle-launch sensation.

And there was Some Dude next to me on the left. While this is an expected characteristic of commercial theaters, it is still a break from perfection and should be mentioned. At home, if there is Some Dude next to me, I invited him. And if I did not, long-standing tradition in the United States allows me to shoot him dead, which is entertainment in itself.

HOME:

Pro: I can sprawl around all I want, assuming I haven't got friends over, and I always have the best seat in the house. Nobody ever sits in front of me. And as mentioned above, the Some Dude problem does not exist.

Con: It's not as comfortable. This is probably because I have a couch I got from the Salvation Army for $69. It's pretty damned good for $69, and it even has a pretty nice suede slip cover that matches my wall fabric perfectly, but there are times during a movie when you shift around or think in some way about your seating, which definitely isn't ideal. Also, when your friend gets Cheez-Its on your couch, it's your own and that kind of sucks. And you can't beat up your friend for it, either, because you ate the Cheez-Its too and he brought them.

CONCLUSION:
Commercial by a hair. Even if I could have the same theater seats at home, the sheer lazy comfort of a couch and ability to lie down or, say, hang backwards with your legs up and your head hanging where your feet would be, is pretty nice. But the absolute comfort and disappearing act the Regal seats did let me get into the movie a bit more, and the buck stops there.

AUDIO

THEATER:

Pro: Dialog audibility was perfect - again, I never thought about it. And the audio was, of course, clean. But it was unremarkable.

Con: There were a few times when loud dialog or effects were harsh on the ears - which was surprising as the overall volume was fairly low, and this is a negative of my home system I assumed would *never* be a problem in a commercial theater.

The overall volume was fairly low - enough to work, but not enough to really utilize the dynamic range present in a good soundtrack. There were no "holy sh*t" moments in an audio track I think probably had a few. The sub existed, but no more. Zero tactile feel, and no moments where the sound made me feel like I was there. The surround effects were particularly muted; it almost felt like a good 2.0 setup rather than 5.1 or 7.1. And the fronts didn't feel like there was much separation. I was pretty surprised at how lacklustre the audio was.

HOME:

Pro: (My setup: I have two large Cerwin Vegas for the fronts, which get some of the sub channel as they can take it, a smaller CV center in deference to WAF, two CV surrounds which are more than adequate to the task for my fairly small space, and three floor-firing 12" subwoofers lined up behind the couch. The fronts, rears, and center are driven by separate amps, and the subs are run by two.)

While I can't do a 1:1 comparison, not having seen Golden Compass on my own system, my general experience is that audio is extremely well done even on pretty lousy movies within the past 7-10 years. And while audio is incredibly subjective - definitely moreso than video - from my perspective my system makes me far happier, and sh*t-eating grins from some of my friends suggest it's not just me. The sound just kind of sparkles, at the risk of sounding like an audiophile, and the stereo imaging at home is vastly better; not even in the same league. My HT made the Regal feel like a big boom box in terms of imaging. This is probably a function of size and volume requirements for the space, but again - cry me a river; this is a comparison of the experience sans justifications, either for my HT's failings or the Regal's.

Music sounds utterly fantastic on my home system, enough to make you close your eyes and enough to make you sit through the credits. I'm certainly not claiming to have the end-all and be-all - far, far from it - but it's cold clear water if the Regal is a mud puddle.

Again, no comparison on the low end. Life-threatening booms at home feel genuinely life-threatening, and my cats' responses bear this out.

Surround effects and environment are awesome. Without overwhelming the rest of the audio, rain, echoes, and zinging bullets are there.

Con:

Dialog is not perfect. I haven't really set up the speaker system - but again, no excuses - and there are times when dialog can get muddy or harsh.

Cranking the audio up enough to feel 'satisfying' can sometimes "harshen" the mids in effects or distort the bass. The last thing you need when watching a movie is to go 'erngh' or 'ehh?' and this is definitely not dialed in yet on my system.

Limited space means those all the way to the left will get unbalanced surround effects; same to the right.

Again, limited space and WAF means the center isn't up to the level of the other fronts, and this is a weak link.


CONCLUSION:

Despite some real rough edges, my personal preference is for my own system. Even if I mainly watched classics or tense personal dramas rather than action / fantasy movies, it would be easy to dial it in to fix most of the problems. And the commercial experience, while having fewer flaws, was completely bland. It did precisely the minimum necessary to not be actively bad. I'd rather have rough edges in an audio system that stops my heart during Transformers than one which avoids most - but still not all - problems at the expense of a compelling experience.


(The only commercial theater I've been in which doesn't have this problem is a converted stage in a tiny town near where I live; the owners set it up almost on a whim and had no bleed to worry about with just one theater. Hearing the Orcs pounding the ground before the battle of Helms' Deep in Two Towers was almost enough to make me cry in terror; I can remember it in a tactile way like I can hold it up to the light and look at it. That theater is probably 40 feet tall, 75 feet deep and 120 feet wide; god knows what gear they have in that place.)


VIDEO

THEATER:

Pro: Sharp, sharp, sharp. Sharp as nails, sharp as a tack, sharp as a sharp thing in sharpville. Beautiful colors (with the caveat below), perfect white (amidst a lot of snow scenes) and popping-bright.

Con: Black level was absolutely awful and shadow detail was crushed to nonexistence.

Now, it definitely wasn't digital, because another con was some frame shake and spotting / scratching on the print. I don't think it was the print or the projection, because the idiots that run the theater kept the lights at 'mood' level instead of turning them off. Blacks were red the whole way through the film, and dark scenes resulted in a big red rectangle. Any details under probably 20IRE started to get mangled or weren't easily visible; I remember a few scenes where someone's dark suit was in the corner of the frame and the visual effect was that a suit turned into kind of a red glow. This was all the more noticeable due to the jet-black velvet backing, which in this case did more harm than good by providing a real black reference! This one problem almost completely destroyed any visual advantage.


HOME:

Pro: (My setup: Partially dialed in Barco 808s.) Black levels. Black levels that make reflected moonlight from another room an issue, and with HTPC gamma correction, zero crush that means every detail is there whether dank-and-dim or blinding bright. Because of the HTPC gamma I have black on the Barco set so the screen is absolutely invisible at full black even in a jet black room, and the contrast is a beautiful thing. I'm 100% sure it's not perfect, and overall the greyscales are probably at 50% or worse of a real setup, but in this case the comparison on the low brightness end is so utterly atrocious that it doesn't matter.

Con: Colors aren't wonderful yet, and whites aren't great. This is a setup limitation rather than a PJ limitation on the whites side; filtering will fix the colors. The biggest con, though, is sharpness - I'm running SD DVD, and the image is about the same FOV as the theater screen or a bit wider. The softness, even with very good upscaling, is fine in the moment but incredibly obvious compared with a high resolution image.


CONCLUSION: For personal preference I'm going to go with my own setup on this one, too. If it weren't for the abysmally bad visual setup at the Regal it would win hands down, but in no-excuses-land I'm not going to say, "Well, it could have been set up better" and give them a pass. It wasn't, and I'll take softness and not so great colors over the horrific low brightness performance at the Regal any way. Years of theatergoing didn't make DVD softness unacceptable; 50 hours of HT with good blacks made watching the redded out crud at the Regal like getting bitchslapped every time there was a dark edge on the frame.


OBSCURUM EST CONFUTO

What we have in the end is interesting. There are quite a few significant ways the commercial theater bests my own. Aside from the (probably anomalous) black performance at the Regal, the flaws in the commercial theater are objectively minor while those at home are objectively major.

But even with perfect blacks at the commercial theater, and even assuming cost, time, and convenience are no objects, I think I'll still be waiting for DVD (until I go HD). Maybe it's just my personality, but to me, the commercial theater is a kind of BMW 7-series: Slick, perfect, comfortable, and performs great. But I'd rather have the brutal, flawed passion of an early '80s Porsche 911, something that scares me and leaves me sore, than a smooth ride without a flaw in sight.

It may not he a flawless victory, but as the Mortal Kombat announcer would say, HOME THEATER WINS. FATALITY.

[emdawgz1]

Sounds like the home setup is being adversely affected by the WAF.

This brings into question the advisability of keeping the W.

Pro: W can be useful for cooking, cleaning, and "other duties" as necessary.

Con: W can be a big expense. This combined with the HT difficulty she causes.

Conclusion: Dump W and finish the HT

Its the logical thing to do

[perisoft]