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ecrabb
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Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 15909
Location: Utah
TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 3:27 am Post subject: |
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| perisoft wrote: | | 'm just not sure what variables are really left - you can make the sound cleaner, you can make the bass tighter, you can make the image sharper and the colors better. But compared to the maximum possible technology available, and the maximum ability of the directors and producers to utilize it, I doubt there's more than a 20% *objective* difference at most. How that translates into 'wow' factor, though, I can't say. |
I don't think it's as hard as you'd think it would be to quantify the variables, although maybe it would be tough to put it into any sort of meaningful composite percentage because everybody has different priorities. But, I'd say HT performance is a lot like cars - especially performance cars. It keeps costing more and more to get incremental performance increases as you push the envelope. For instance, it's much easier to see the difference between a $1,000 system and a $5,000 than it is to see the difference between $20,000 and $30,000.
Of course, like cars, some people want a really flexible room that can function in different ways and are happy to sacrifice performance (minivan/SUV) while some of us want the best performance we can afford and don't care if the room is all black and purpose-built for one thing (custom-built sports car).
I'd say there are a whole slew of things that would make it pretty easy to quantify performance. A few of the basics would be room size and seating, viewing angles, display resolution, contrast and brightness, sound isolation and noise floor, RT60 (reverb), amplifier headroom at reference SPL, etc.
SC
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Phil Smith
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 7717
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 4:24 am Post subject: |
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| Clarence wrote: | But the advantage of a large collection is to be able to ask a guest what he wants to see.
If you have a big $ HT, you don't want someone to say "oooh... do you have _________, I'd love to see it in this fancy theater". And then Phil's reply would be, um, no, but I can add it to my netflix queue, so can you come back next week.
Besides, in a $500,000+ HT, even if they spent $20 per title, that's only $70K... chump change to a rich videophile. |
| ecrabb wrote: | | Clarence is exactly right - it's about the selection. With music, you don't have 10,000 songs on an iPod to listen to music for 20 days uninterrupted, you have them so that you always have the music to suit any mood or whim. Same with the movies. |
When you have guest over for dinner, do you prepare 1000's of different dishes for your guest to select from?
I did mention I rip DVDs for time shifting. I usually have at least 10 to 15 recent releases ripped that I haven't seen. Guest or no guest, I don't want to watch a movie I've already veiwed, so there's plenty of selection to make everyone happy.
I have enough storage capacity for 600-700 ripped DVDs. I never have more than 120-130. Movies I know I won't watch again (almost all of them) I delete.
I don't think the song analogy is a good one. You listen to songs you like many, many times. You might listen to the same song several times a day for weeks. Do you do that with movies? I sure hope not. Plus they're 3-4 minutes long, not 2 hours long, making listening to a large selection a very doable thing.
Let's be honest. There's no practical reason for a big DVD collection. It's simply for show. It's to impress your guests.
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Clarence
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 3827
Location: Smith Mtn Lake, VA
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 5:05 am Post subject: |
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| Phil Smith wrote: | | Let's be honest. There's no practical reason for a big DVD collection. It's simply for show. It's to impress your guests. |
Who claimed any of those HT$ were striving for practicality? you think they might be trying to impress guests?! one-up their neighbors? Hmmm... who's HT should we go to next weekend... the Smith's with 100 DVDs or the Jones's with 3000 titles?
Would this be more practical?... a $100K+ HT with only 100 titles available? 
Why collect baseball cards? pokemon cards? beanie babies?
Why buy jukebox 45's when in the past 40 years I've already bought a lot of the same titles on LP, cassette, and CD, and MP3?
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Phil Smith
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 7717
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 5:20 am Post subject: |
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I thought I wanted to do it at one point, and bought an 8 bay firewire drive tower for that very purpose. By the time I finally filled it up with drives though, I had already decided that a big collection was not for me. The only reason I have 4TB is for ripping high def DVDs (which I still have yet to do), not to store a lot SD DVDs.
I do agree with you though. You make a good point. There's no reason not to do it if that's what you want to do. I just don't think there's any real practical reason for it, other than simply you like it.
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Phil Smith
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 7717
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 5:50 am Post subject: |
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| Clarence wrote: | | Hmmm... who's HT should we go to next weekend... the Smith's with 100 DVDs or the Jones's with 3000 titles? |
I'm not sure that makes any difference. I generally have the latest releases ripped, or I should say the latest good releases. That's what everyone usually wants to see anyway. The way I see it, Smith's have just about as good of chance pleasing it's guest as the the Jone's do.
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97ss150
Joined: 19 Dec 2007
Posts: 161
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 6:00 am Post subject: |
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lol this is where i chime in and say im glad to even be able to watch any movie, all the way through without my kids ruining it. million dollar ht or not 
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Dave Lister
Joined: 16 Jan 2007
Posts: 436
Location: Adelaide, South Australia
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oliverg
Joined: 15 May 2007
Posts: 800
Location: Melbourne, Australia
TV/Projector: Sony G90 X2 - Vidikron Vision 1
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 9:41 am Post subject: |
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| Phil Smith wrote: | Oliver,
If you watched 3 movies a week (a lot by most people's standards), it would take 24 1/2 years to watch 3,816 DVDs, and that's if you never buy another DVD or watch a DVD more than once. It's also assuming you want to watch all of them. Many I'm sure you don't.
The vast majority of your collection will never be viewed. There just isn't enough time.
This is why I don't buy DVDs. I rent and rip DVDs for time shifting purposes only. Unless I really, REALLY like a movie, I delete it after viewing it once. |
I've watched my whole collection, even before I was stuck in bed. Some of them I've watched 2-10 times. (eg Star Wars). Some people collect stamps, I collect movies and music. Having such a collection is rewarding to me.
I would watch at least a movie per night on average - Mind you, I might watch all 7 on a whole day and nothng on the other days.
I know I'm not the only person who collects DVDs or music, I have at least a half dozen friends who all have collections just as large (not copied from each other). Also have several rooms full of books too - I started with books I guess and the habit just caught on. I like re-reading books too 
Is it really such a strange concept?
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97ss150
Joined: 19 Dec 2007
Posts: 161
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 2:32 pm Post subject: |
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| Dave Lister wrote: | | 97ss150 wrote: | | lol this is where i chime in and say im glad to even be able to watch any movie, all the way through without my kids ruining it. million dollar ht or not |
The real bonus to having your own HT is not having to worry about other peoples kids (or even the adults) ruining the movie. |
i do have my own but i have my two lil movie ruiners that like to add their own soundtrack. although my wife and i did watch our first movie all the way through uninterrupted in our theater last night. we watched knocked up. btw that movie is funny as hell
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ecrabb
Forum Moderator
Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 15909
Location: Utah
TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 3:00 pm Post subject: |
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I have decent collections of music and movies - probably 750+ CDs and 250 or 300 DVDs. The lion's share of both were purchased on sale, used, etc. Very few of them were full-price.
Phil, I don't quite understand your impulse to attempt to dismantle the logic of others' decisions to have large collections. Just because it doesn't make sense for you somehow means it can't make sense for anyone else? Dozens of decisions we all make are made on the basis of wanting to do it because we enjoy it - not on some logical pragmatic fundamental ideology. Weekend sports cars, boats, golf club memberships, second homes, motorhomes... the list goes on for miles. Hell, our home theater themselves could even go into this category. Why spend $10,000 and a year of your life researching, designing, and building a home theater when for $8 you could just go to any commercial theater any day of the week and see any one of a dozen or so movies? These things are all luxuries with little to no PRACTICAL application. People buy and have luxuries because they derive pleasure from owning and using them. So it is with DVD collections (as well as lots of other sorts of collections.)
To kind of turn this around on you, to be honest I don't see any sense in owning a 4TB drive just to rip HDM! For what you probably spent on the RAID array (that you haven't even used yet), you could have a 4-at-a-time Netflix plan for probably FOUR YEARS. That's just silly. Why would you need anything more than that?
SC
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ecrabb
Forum Moderator
Joined: 13 Mar 2006
Posts: 15909
Location: Utah
TV/Projector: JVC RS40, Epson 5010
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 3:07 pm Post subject: |
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| 97ss150 wrote: | | i do have my own but i have my two lil movie ruiners that like to add their own soundtrack. although my wife and i did watch our first movie all the way through uninterrupted in our theater last night. we watched knocked up. btw that movie is funny as hell |
Our theater is a total getaway for my wife and me. Most weekend nights after the kids are in bed, the wife and I go watch a movie. It's a real escape for us. We used to escape on a Harley. Since the new house and kids came along, the Harley isn't so practical anymore - now, it's the theater. It's worth every penny of what we spent - even my wife LOVES it.
We saw Knocked up a couple months ago. Very funny. We saw Superbad yesterday. It should be called Superraunchy. The father from Knocked Up played a cop in Superbad. It was pretty funny most of the time, but it was REALLY raunchy. I think there was a reference made to penis, dick, c*ck, etc. over 400 times during the course of the movie. The BD release has an interactive counter you can turn on to count whenever one of three things occur in the dialog: profanity, penis talk, McLovin (a character's fake ID name).
SC
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macgyver655
Joined: 22 Aug 2007
Posts: 8508
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 4:06 pm Post subject: |
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| ecrabb wrote: | I have decent collections of music and movies - probably 750+ CDs and 250 or 300 DVDs. The lion's share of both were purchased on sale, used, etc. Very few of them were full-price.
Phil, I don't quite understand your impulse to attempt to dismantle the logic of others' decisions to have large collections. Just because it doesn't make sense for you somehow means it can't make sense for anyone else? Dozens of decisions we all make are made on the basis of wanting to do it because we enjoy it - not on some logical pragmatic fundamental ideology. Weekend sports cars, boats, golf club memberships, second homes, motorhomes... the list goes on for miles. Hell, our home theater themselves could even go into this category. Why spend $10,000 and a year of your life researching, designing, and building a home theater when for $8 you could just go to any commercial theater any day of the week and see any one of a dozen or so movies? These things are all luxuries with little to no PRACTICAL application. People buy and have luxuries because they derive pleasure from owning and using them. So it is with DVD collections (as well as lots of other sorts of collections.)
To kind of turn this around on you, to be honest I don't see any sense in owning a 4TB drive just to rip HDM! For what you probably spent on the RAID array (that you haven't even used yet), you could have a 4-at-a-time Netflix plan for probably FOUR YEARS. That's just silly. Why would you need anything more than that?
SC |
Very well said.......
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Phil Smith
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 7717
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 4:37 pm Post subject: |
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| ecrabb wrote: | | Why spend $10,000 and a year of your life researching, designing, and building a home theater when for $8 you could just go to any commercial theater any day of the week and see any one of a dozen or so movies? These things are all luxuries with little to no PRACTICAL application. |
SC,
Again I don't think this is a good analogy. I think there are many practical reasons for having an HT:
1)I don't think most of us spent anywhere near $10K for our HTs (I know I didn't)...well maybe I did, but it would be because of my audio gear.
2) It's at your home! You don't have to go anywhere. Would you and your wife wait until the kids went to sleep and leave the house to go to a movie theater late at night to watch a movie? Assuming you could even do that (leave your kids unattended), would that be as relaxing, or relaxing at all?
3) You just don't use it just for movies. Most of us also use it to watch HDTV.
| Quote: | | To kind of turn this around on you, to be honest I don't see any sense in owning a 4TB drive just to rip HDM! For what you probably spent on the RAID array (that you haven't even used yet), you could have a 4-at-a-time Netflix plan for probably FOUR YEARS. That's just silly. Why would you need anything more than that? |
It cost me about $1,100 to build. At $20 a month, that would pay for Netflix for 4 1/2 years.
With a Netflix account, the most movies I would have to chose from at any given time is 4. After I watched one I'd have 3, and so on. Plus you have the in-the-mail down time where you might not have anything to watch.
Ripping to hard drives, I've had as many as 35 movies I hadn't seen to chose from. I can watch any particular movie anytime I chose (the time shifting thing). When I got ahead by 35 movies, I actually canceled my account until I caught up. I also get more movies by ripping. As soon as I get them in the mail, I rip them and send them back. I also get 5 free in-store movies a month. Ripping allows me to get the maximum amount of movies a month from Blockbuster. I think I get about 17 per month, making my per movie cost not much more than $1.
You may be right that it's not practical, but as far as I can tell, there are a few real world benefits to renting and ripping.
But I already acknowledged that you should do whatever makes you happy. I just made an observation about large collections.
Last edited by Phil Smith on Sun Jan 27, 2008 4:42 pm; edited 1 time in total
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Phil Smith
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 7717
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 4:41 pm Post subject: |
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| oliverg wrote: | | Phil Smith wrote: | Oliver,
If you watched 3 movies a week (a lot by most people's standards), it would take 24 1/2 years to watch 3,816 DVDs, and that's if you never buy another DVD or watch a DVD more than once. It's also assuming you want to watch all of them. Many I'm sure you don't.
The vast majority of your collection will never be viewed. There just isn't enough time.
This is why I don't buy DVDs. I rent and rip DVDs for time shifting purposes only. Unless I really, REALLY like a movie, I delete it after viewing it once. |
I've watched my whole collection, even before I was stuck in bed. Some of them I've watched 2-10 times. (eg Star Wars). Some people collect stamps, I collect movies and music. Having such a collection is rewarding to me.
I would watch at least a movie per night on average - Mind you, I might watch all 7 on a whole day and nothng on the other days.
I know I'm not the only person who collects DVDs or music, I have at least a half dozen friends who all have collections just as large (not copied from each other). Also have several rooms full of books too - I started with books I guess and the habit just caught on. I like re-reading books too
Is it really such a strange concept? |
Oliver,
You must not have a job, nor ever eat or sleep. That's the only way you could have enough time in a day for your movie, music and reading interest.
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AnalogRocks
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Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 26706
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 6:38 pm Post subject: |
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| oliverg wrote: |
I've watched my whole collection, even before I was stuck in bed. Some of them I've watched 2-10 times. (eg Star Wars). |
<geek>Origional Star Wars I've watched over 600 times. </geek>
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AvgOrdinaryGuy
Joined: 03 Dec 2006
Posts: 123
Location: Northeast Arkansas USA
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 6:49 pm Post subject: |
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| AnalogRocks wrote: | | <geek>Origional Star Wars I've watched over 600 times. </geek> |
 What! That's almost two times every month for the past 30 years 8 months since it's release!
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Phil Smith
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 7717
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 6:54 pm Post subject: |
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Wow!
Everyone's different. I rarely watch a movie more than once, and I don't enjoy ANY movie, no matter how much I like it, near as much the second time around (which is why I don't usually watch them more than once).
Last edited by Phil Smith on Sun Jan 27, 2008 6:56 pm; edited 1 time in total
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garyfritz
Joined: 08 Apr 2006
Posts: 12088
Location: Fort Collins, CO
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 6:56 pm Post subject: |
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That *is* scary. I thought it was bad that I saw it 17 times, in the theaters, while it was still in first run. And I was a broke college student...
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Clarence
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 3827
Location: Smith Mtn Lake, VA
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 7:02 pm Post subject: |
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I don't know if I've ever seen any movie 17 times, much less in a commercial movie theater.
Some "classics" I've maybe watched 10-12 times... Rocky Horror, Monty Python, Stripes, Fast Times, The Wall, Star Wars, Matrix, Indiana Jones, LOTR, etc.
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Phil Smith
Joined: 08 Mar 2006
Posts: 7717
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| Posted: Sun Jan 27, 2008 7:03 pm Post subject: |
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I've been thinking about this. Watching the same movie over 600 times goes well beyond really liking it. That's some sort of obsession. A severe, possibly unhealthy obsession. Are you just shittin' us AR?
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