Firey take, but health insurers are not the problem they are made out to be. They're on your team and benefit from lower prices just as much as you do. They don't make any money either, don't argue with me, buy their stocks if you are so convinced and see how that goes over.
Health care providers carry immense blame. It's full of passionless people in it for the outsized paychecks, who once inside will just seek whatever local minimum to stay employed.
Having worked in medicine, I agree about providers. People who probably got in it to help people burn out immediately and become like the rest of us looking for the best paycheck with a tolerable workplace.
Insurance companies make plenty of money though. Cigna makes $7-8B per year and pays a decent dividend.
This is a comically uneducated take. Talk to a nurse and ask them how their week was. Then talk to someone at an insurance provider. The ask how much each makes.
Exactly, ask anyone in a job for the money how their week was.
Not saying nursing is stress free, or every nurse is bad, but like tech companies in 2021, it's full of directionless people who pushed through the cert program to get paid $50/hr with $100/hr weekend shifts and be disgruntled with you that you are making them do work.
> health insurers...'re on your team and benefit from lower prices just as much as you do
You're missing a very, very, very important piece here.
Which is that the lowest price of all is to deny treatment entirely.
They are not on your team, they are the opposite team. Their revenue is basically fixed, at the level of your premiums. But the more health care they pay for you to receive, the less profit they make. That's just arithmetic.
This is why there are so many horror stories of people being denied necessary treatment, or having to fight for months and years to get their treatment actually paid for. Insurance providers are incentivized to do their absolute best at taking your money and then not paying for care, through every sort of technicality and "mistake" and arbitrary judgment and limit they can come up with.
The several+ times in my life I've had to sort out billing issues, the health "insurance" agents have been helpful and friendly, stating what bills should be in no uncertain terms, even offering to conference call with billing departments to get things resolved, etc... Meanwhile provider billing departments routinely try to defraud me, even going so far as to bully me to pay those fraudulent amounts, don't follow up on things (eg filing claims) that are their responsibility and that they've said they will take care of, and generally make their problems into my problems.
This certainly isn't a defense of health "insurance" companies though! I just think they're better modeled as Lovecraftian horrors animated by paperwork and compelling the creation of ever more paperwork to feed on, rather than money-grubbing cheapskates as the pop-political narrative goes. And the approaches for fixing one are much different than the approaches for fixing the other.
If health insurers are on my team why do they blatantly lie about their network coverage to me? Why do they list providers as in-network, when the providers consider themselves out of network?
Why aren't the executives of these insurers shilling ghost networks not in prison for mail fraud?
Kinda drifting off topic, but I'm so bitter over this
My girlfriend had been paying for 1Gb fiber for about 5 years at the insistence of the rep because "You stream 4k content and use your internet for work". $110/mo or something. Verizon comes by and sets her up with a modem and an "auto-route smart 2.4GHz/5GHz" router which slots you into a frequency based on...something. Who knows because it didn't work. It just put everything on 2.4GHz.
I noticed while at her house that the internet was painfully slow downloading large files and dug into it.
For those who don't know, 2.4GHz will typically top out around 100Mbps. Around the house you're looking at closer to 50Mbps. With 5Ghz it's much better, about 500Mbps typical, but verizons awful "smart" router just put everything on 2.4GHz.
So for years she had been paying for 1Gbps, Verizon happily taking her money, while she never saw over 100Mbps. It's also not like they tell you anywhere that the router they give you will only realistically offer 1/10th your Gb speed. Such a dumpster tier company. I can only imagine there are tens of thousands being conned by this scheme.
Anyway, I put in a new router and switched to the cheapest plan. The internet is now much faster.
A business is not entitled to make people look at their ads. If they offer something in a publicly accessible place and they get ad eyeballs, good for them. If they don't, sucks for them. If they don't like it there are plenty of other markets they can do business in.
If they want to charge users with ad-blockers under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for unauthorized access for viewing non-protected pages then they should do that. Otherwise, you are wrong.
>Visitors like you are a tiny minority who were never going to contribute revenue anyway.
It's closer to 30% that block ads. For subscription conversion, it's under 1%.
It's a large reason why the situation is so bad. But the internet is full of children, even grown children now in their 40's, who desperately still cling to this teenage idea that ad blocking will save the internet.
The effect of this is that those markets should dry up as the information quality is so poor. So bad that even insiders are taking risk by betting on an outcome.
Unlike the regular markets though, which are dominated by smart money, these markets are dominated by degen gamblers and idiots, so I guess they just shrug it off.
The last movie we attended people were incredibly disruptive throughout the film, to the point that it was difficult to focus on the film. Some people enjoy screaming, laughing, and talking as part of the experience, but it's apparently been normalized beyond my tolerance threshold. Add in the cost and overall movie quality decrease of Hollywood productions, and it's difficult to justify.
Presently, we watch foreign movies at home 95% of the time and maybe a Hollywood production when they manage to find their roots and create something worth watching.
Sort of off topic, but almost the same can be said for music concerts. During slower or softer songs, people can be heard talking and laughing loudly. I get it, they paid their money, same as us, but we didn't pay to hear them.
A couple of years ago, I went to see Echo & The Bunnymen open for Violent Femmes. I had seen the Femmes multiple times, but was really excited to see Echo. These two old biddies that sat in front of us talked the entire show. In between bands, one of them dropped their purse without noticing. I picked it up and offered in exchange for the purse if they wouldn't mind talking through the next act. They were shocked at the nerve and said they didn't talk that much. I then told them all about their kids and their school work and other nonsense that I had to endure. The looked at each other like "oops". To my luck, the show was not sold out, and we moved down our row to get away from them. I obviously gave the purse back
People call the classical music audience prudish for demanding quiet during performances, but IMO when you go to a concert it should be ok to shush people who talk during the quiet parts.
On the one hand, you're at a social experience. On the other hand, aren't you supposed to have your senses engaged in a shared experience? The interpersonal conversation diminishes that. On the other other hand, as long as you're having fun and not doing harm, do whatever. As the Master of Ceremonies, I love it. On the other other other hand, talking pushes up the noise floor, making louder concerts a necessity. A louder concert is more dangerous to your hearing.
There is a difference between us all experiencing a shared artistic experience and us hearing about your kids while we are trying very hard to share an artistic experience.
I wouldn't complain much about people singing along to a ballad or such but yapping, you can go do that somewhere else.
I'm so split on this. Ultimately I think I land on: "if there's chairs, engage in the shared sensory experience. If it's GA standing room only, it's a party and do whatever."
As a musician I ask if the music is so fragile it can't stand up to some extraneous background noise, is it really worth listening to?
Also, if the music feels bad enough to where people find talking to each other more pleasant than listening, isn't that the fault of the 'sensory experience?'
It really depends on the music and the background noise? Talking (more likely yelling) in the middle of a rock concert? Probably not an issue. I’m wearing earplugs anyway. Holding a conversation in the middle of a quiet passage during an orchestra performance? Everyone near you wants you to shut up.
It’s like people talking through a comedy show. Saying something quietly to the person next to you? Whatever. Talking loudly for 20 minutes? Get the fuck out. Go talk to your friends at a bar and let people who came to hear the act enjoy the act.
> if the music feels bad enough to where people find talking to each other more pleasant than listening
But then leave. If you don’t like the show, it’s totally fair for you to just get up and go. Talking through a show you don’t care about and disturbing people who do want to be there? Why?
Curious if you have a sense of how long this has been going on. My perception is that various sorts of rudeness and inconsiderateness have been on the rise for a while, but really jumped post-COVID.
Some of it is minor but just suggests to me that many people lack any sense that they should be aware of others around them. Just today I was walking down the street and a woman was stopped, in the middle of the sidewalk, staring at her phone. She was in front of a shop door but not right in front of it, so she was half-blocking both people passing on the sidewalk and people trying to get into the store. I see this kind of thing so often now, in store aisles, on sidewalks, etc., and a part of me wants to go up to these people and inform them that there are other people around them and that if they want to take a moment to look at their phone they should step to the side.
Definitely post-COVID. I remember going to see bands in between or just after lockdowns ended, and even the bands were taken aback by the change in audience behaviour, commenting on it. Lots of self-entitled behaviour, talking and even yelling out during quiet moments, people walking up to the stage during a seated Nick Cave concert demanding to hand him stuff or shake his hand - I remember him saying "wow, you guys really forgot how to behave over the last couple of years". Now it just seems to be normalised that crowd behaviour is worse, more self-entitled. I'm not sure what's driving it - whether people who previously weren't going to gigs decided, during lockdown, that they wanted to go out and do stuff more, but just had never learned the etiquette, and/or social media making the experience about the individual rather than the performance.
> many people lack any sense that they should be aware of others around them.
It's not "people". One half of all people grows up playing contact sports or at least have some form of rough-and-tumble with their homies in schoolyards. This half also knows that you can get punched if things get too rowdy.
The other does not. Almost all of the entitled road blockers are in this category.
I went with my daughter to see Taylor Swift in Tokyo. It was an amazing experiences. Swift fans prefer recording Tokyo performances because fangs don’t sing along to the music or talk during the performance.
Audiences in Tokyo aren’t quite to make it easier to record. It just so happens that audiences in Tokyo tend to be quiet, so the recordings of the Tokyo shows tend to end up the clearest.
I saw Avatar 3 here in Tokyo where I live. It was great! I saw the Dolby 3D version. Popcorn was pretty cheap, tickets were reasonably priced, the audience was as quiet as the dead.
I've seen several other movies (normal ones, not 3D/IMAX/etc.) here since I moved here, and they were all the same. Audiences here have excellent behavior.
We're planning to see Project Hail Mary this weekend when it comes out, this time on IMAX.
A couple years ago I went to a county fair because someone said the pie judging was worth seeing. I’ve been to fairs before but never really watched the judging part. They had all the pies on this weird low table, like not quite a kid’s playset table but close, so people leaning in to look kept bumping it with their legs and thighs without noticing, and after a while one of the pies just slowly started sliding toward the edge every time the table got nudged until it eventually tipped off and landed upside down on the floor while the judges were busy debating crust integrity on another pie.
I picked it up and put it back and they still gave it third place.
Just went to a very small show, 200 tickets but lots of no shows. Maybe 100 people there total. The folks at the bar were so rude to the talent just loudly talking over them. I just don’t get it.
Couldn't disagree more. It's a social experience, it's so unfun and antisocial to have some go to a large gathering of humans and get annoyed when their presence is detectable. Go listen to the song by yourself in a room
With current TV setups or projector technology I basically have cinema in my living room.
As a kid who grew up in 90’s I would say it is easily better than what cinema had back then.
I don’t have that high expectations of sound/video as many people will point out that streaming kills the quality but for all its worth still much better than what I need to enjoy a movie.
One of the criteria for me to go to the theater was the big screen and big sound would really add to the experience. The last film I saw in the theater was was so loud that it physically hurt and ruined the experience.
As you say with the image quality being as high at home now plus a decent surround system really makes the theater experience at home very enjoyable.
These days it's hard for the screen and sound alone to compete with home theater tech. So the only remaining edge a theater might have is the presence of others. The Minecraft movie was the perfect example of this. Some of our kid's classmates went to see it multiple times due to the viral audience cues. And to think that some theaters tried to suppress it.
If you are in an urban area and are not a millionaire, you probably live in some kind of apartment or studio. And yes, you can stick up a projector and a good surround system... but it might be that the builder cut corners on the floors and your neighbors already come knocking when you are talking, much less turn up the audio system to a tenth of the sound pressure a good cinema sound system provides.
I do live in an apartment and I am far from a millionaire.
I don't have any of the problem - but I don't have "cinema sound system" as I mentioned whatever I have must have just clear sound and clear doesn't mean loud. I don't need "sound experience" to enjoy a movie.
> I don't need "sound experience" to enjoy a movie.
Unfortunately, most cinema movies are not properly remastered in their audio tracks, but keep the original cinema mix. That results in very silent dialogue (which is not a problem in a cinema, at least as long as people behave and don't yap around all the time) and very loud sequences particularly in action shots.
When you now give such a movie to your usual home theater setup, you have to turn up the volume enough so you can understand the dialogue and either constantly turn it down whenever it gets heated or live with neighbors complaining.
Straight-to-streaming releases usually don't suffer from that problem, because they are made and mixed for normal users streaming on their laptops with shitty speakers. Note I said usually, because Disney's Star Wars series are still mastered for decent setups with dynamic range.
There's a debate to be had about the impact of that on storytelling, as straight-to-streaming these days is produced with the movie/episode on a side screen while people are doing something else, so everything that you would normally see on a screen is verbally described by actors, but that's another debate entirely.
Thanks for clarifying that. I always thinking it was due to my bad hearing or lack of fluency! English is my second language, and without subtitles, I'm having trouble to understand the dialogues without increasing the volume until I reach a level where I also got disturbed from the sound effects, bg music etc. It's a bigger issue with movies, not only due to what you explained about sound mixing, but also error correction of my brain works worse without the context, unlike series where I know the plot and the characters.
Watch out for any show with Christopher Nolan as director. He is notorious for terrible audio mixing, and having actor mumble and otherwise dictate horribly.
As an american and English as my only human language, even I need subtitles.
And the movie "Tenet" was so bad that I ragequit 30 minutes in. Horrible horrible audio.
>you have to turn up the volume enough so you can understand the dialogue and either constantly turn it down whenever it gets heated or live with neighbors complaining.
It doesn't help that many actors these days have become students of the "mumble acting" school of acting. It's amazing watching some 50-year-old movie from the 70s and the dialog is crystal-clear and perfectly understandable.
> It's amazing watching some 50-year-old movie from the 70s and the dialog is crystal-clear and perfectly understandable.
Back then dynamic range in cinemas also wasn't there and TVs were mono as well. You couldn't fix stuff in post to a large degree either, so in moviemaking you were all but forced to have sets as quiet as possible and actors speak clearly.
Back pre digital I was once lucky enough to see Aliens on one of the private cinemas at Fox, and it was astounding. I think people underestimate how poorly operated most normal cinemas used to be, combined with maybe not the best prints etc.
I remember seeing In the Mood for Love on the big screen in my local arthouse cinema back around 2000. It was shot with analogue film and projected as such, and the sheer details of the textures were astounding. It's not a bad film on my 4k monitor, but I don't feel the same awe.
IIRC in the film era there was one "master" of the movie, it was duplicated multiple times to make negative versions of the film, then those negatives are used to make the positive copies that are sent to theaters. So you're watching something that has been copied at least twice.
Commercial theaters are all digital now. They don't even have film projectors anymore. Some independent or "revival" cinemas might still have them.
As a huge film buff, I sadly agree. And theaters in my area aren’t doing a good job keeping their projection technology current. When we went to see “Wicked”, my wife leaned over and whispered that it would probably look better on our 77” OLED, and she was absolutely right. The theater image was dark and lacked vibrant color.
> As a kid who grew up in 90’s I would say it is easily better than what cinema had back then.
The best thing a home theatre system has that is equivalent to the 90's experience and superior to current cinema is that you can have an intermission to take a leak.
In the 90's, the intermission was long enough to visit the bathroom and then buy some more popcorn and candy. These days I have to miss some part of the middle of the movie.
There's a middle ground. I go for the laughter and reaction of the audience. I don't go to hear the 2 people behind me have a conversation during the movie. Nor do I go to have people critiquing the movie out loud as we're watching it. I certainly don't go to watch people pop out their phones and scroll through social media or check their messages.
One of my better cinema experiences was watching Austin Powers 3 at the theater in some random late-morning screening where there were only three friends and me in the hall, plus two elderly ladies in their 70s. They were laughing so hard that the movie became even funnier for us, because you somehow wouldn’t expect them to find it that hilarious.
Also, growing up in a small town in Yugoslavia in the 80s definitely didn’t guarantee a top-tier cinema experience, to put it mildly. But the feeling I had watching the James Bond opening credits from a damaged film reel, with frayed subtitles projected from a decades-old projector, is something I can never quite recreate when watching on a 4K screen from a perfect source. So there's that.
The midnight showing of movies like Rocky Horror Picture show are fun when everyone knows that audience participation is the entire reason of going, but that's the only time I want audience participation.
Well, rude behavior stemmed from lack of empathy for other people who have to listen to them. I am sorry you had that bad experience.
Off topic, but since I retired a few years ago, I go to movies all the time but I go during the week and catch movies between 11am to 3pm. Theaters are almost empty, but just enough other people in the theater to feel like a shared experience. I see about five or six movies a month, and my wife goes with me about half the time. I worried that my local theater would go out of business until we went to a Saturday night movie and all 16 theaters seemed busy, will wall to wall people in the huge lobby area.
So, I hope the movie industry survives in close to its present form. I share your fondness to foreign films, BTW.
This is why I strongly endorse buying a projector if the space allows for one. Changed the home experience. I thought I might be making a mistake when I bought my first (720p) years ago but I'd never go back to a traditional television.
I completely disagree. This advice made sense 20 years ago, but today an 85" (or smaller even) OLED screen will easily outperform any projector.
The problem with projectors is that they can't display black: they're shining light through a filter, so they can't produce a true black, and the contrast ratio isn't that great. For best effect, you need an extremely dark room. With an OLED screen, black is absolutely black, because black pixels simply aren't lit up at all, and you get better contrast ratio than a projector. As a bonus, you can even watch it with the lights on.
A 120” or whatever screen is still massively larger than an 85” OLED. Yeah, the picture quality isn’t as good but it’s also more like a theater, so you get that nostalgia factor.
Obviously it depends on your projector/screen choice but it’ll probably be cheaper, too. The portability is also nice.
If I watch a movie by myself, I would choose my $500 27" 4k monitor connected to proper speakers/headphone over a $300 55" TV without external soundbar any day. Most people probably will choose the opposite, which I totally understand.
Most if not all the ticket price goes directly into the studio's pockets.
So the theatres stay alive by selling concessions.
I'd wager everyone here complaining about prices would also wax poetic about how theatres don't "pay a living wage" to the kids scooping popcorn and would immediately drive home in their $100k Rivians or Teslas so they can give a one star review on Yelp or complain on Reddit about the bathrooms or floors being dirty or sticky.
These same people wouldn't bat an eye at paying $14 for a food truck grilled cheese and leave a tip.
> These same people wouldn't bat an eye at paying $14 for a food truck grilled cheese and leave a tip.
This seems weirdly condescending, especially since I think these two things are very related.
There are two types of $14 food truck grilled cheese in my experience:
The first type is usually found at farmer’s markets or free city events where the cheese will be local and artisan, and the bread will be local and artisan, and it’ll be pretty freaking good, and remind you that you can make incredible food with simple ingredients.
The second type is where there’s a captive audience, like a music festival or a brewery patio. This is no free market: you are hungry, and you’re about to be exploited.
I find American society increasingly reflected in the second type of $14 grilled cheese. Movie theaters, sporting events, music events, video games, tipping culture, hidden fees, etc. etc. Exploitative business practices to extract profit at the expense of the customer. It’s like walking around being shown the middle finger at all times. And people complain about the breakdown of the social contract…
> the cheese will be local and artisan, and the bread will be local and artisan, and it’ll be pretty freaking good, and remind you that you can make incredible food with simple ingredients.
Simple ingredients should be cheap. It’s fucking cheese and bread, stop trying to normalize $15 for it. The raw ingredients are milk and wheat, both of which are incredible cheap.
You’re disregarding training, labor, and the intangibles of culture and tradition. Those things should be cheaper, but in America we’ve basically all but destroyed bakery artisanship at the altar of capitalist efficiency, so its rarity has now made its products more expensive. Cheese is in a slightly better position, but only barely, and very regionally-dependent (Wisconsin and Oregon, for example).
So yeah, I don’t disagree, it should be about half the price if we had better artisan programs in the US. But I don’t think wonder bread and Kraft singles should set the bar for grilled cheese pricing.
The difference between wonder bread and home bread isn’t rocket science. They use refined enriched wheat with a bunch of additives for shelf life whereas homemade bread is just wheat, water, yeast and salt. The raw materials for homemade bread are vastly cheaper. They make tons of factory processed bread that are dirt cheap and are indistinguishable from some artisanal baker making it.
Cheese has more nuance to it and I agree the difference between Kraft singles and an aged cheese are vastly different especially in time and labor. For instance Gruyère ages for a minimum of 5 months. All of that being said, your artisanal food truck isn’t making the Gruyère and only about $1.50 worth of cheese goes into it (compared to $0.35 if you used kraft singles).
You’re forgetting the cost of the food truck itself including maintenance and depreciation, plus propane to run the burners and labor to prepare the food, marketing, etc. I’d be surprised if a food truck has a net profit over 10%, after subtracting expenses.
The reasoning doesn't particularly matter to me, honestly. Whether or not it they need to charge a second mortgage to cover the cost of the theater isn't really my problem; these are for-profit companies, I don't need to do them any favor.
Popcorn cost basically nothing to make at home, especially if you buy the raw kernels and pop them yourself, and I can rent a 4k version of a movie for like three dollars on Amazon. My 85" 8k TV cost me $1200 (refurbished, but still). For the cost of going to the theater with my wife 15 times, I can buy that TV to watch movies but also use that same TV for many other things.
Even cheap shitty TVs are pretty ok nowadays, certainly better than the stuff when I was a kid, and after I have to question the point of going to an expensive physical theater where there's a risk of some teenagers talking over the movie and I can't pause if I need to use the bathroom. The theaters might not like it, but regardless of whether its fair, they are competing with TVs now.
Everyone I know with an Espresso machine still goes to coffee shops. Beer is cheaper from a super market but everyone I know prefers pubs.
For some reason this does not hold with cinemas. I way prefer the escapism of the cinema to sitting in my house surrounded by my usual ambient domestic Todo list. Sure I have a very good oled, amazing surround sound, but I'd take the cinema every time. But I can't due to kids.
However, I'm the outlier, none of my friends prefer the cinema. No idea why.
I would generally agree with you except for three points: 1) the price of going to the cinema has surged so much that you have to budget for it in a way you didn't before. 2) I can pause a movie at any time and go to the bathroom or get a new drink. The lack of intermission during longer movies at the theater is rough. 3) The behavior of moviegoers continues to decline. In particular, people with untreated ADHD constantly checking their phones is really distracting. A phone screen really pops in a dark movie theater. And when I watch these people check their phones, they aren't doing anything other than habitually dicking around.
I can go to the movie and there is a decent chance people will talk through the movie or will be on their phones, etc. Or I could watch at home and be guaranteed a great experience.
Movie theaters have to upgrade the experience. They need to police patrons like they used to. They need to sell better food and drinks. And they need to get the pricing model under control.
Or cheapen it. We've got two draft house style theaters that are social experiences that show older reels, things from the public domain, and local and independent film. Door policies vary, but until the set feature time, it's just like a pub with an extra big screen in the back.
It's also cheaper to operate without box office staff and doesn't degrade the experience. People could be always be better, but I'd say big theater chains and Hollywood are really what are out of touch.
In cinemas in the UK that I've been to, the ushers actively tells people to turn off their screens, there's also announcements at the start saying this.
> Beer is cheaper from a super market but everyone I know prefers pubs.
It's a pretty frequent complaint that drinks at pubs, bars, and restaurants have become extortionately expensive, to the point that a lot of younger people are drinking less for that reason.
I avoid "bars" where the bar tenders only pour beers. I much prefer the higher end places where every drink is hand made in front of you where the quality of the bartender is everything. I recognize the skill and accept that the price of the cocktail will be set accordingly. There are places that make cocktails with the same ice they use for soft drinks from premade cocktails charging the same price. I do not go back to those ever again after I slog down the one drink. Luckily, I'm a freak where I didn't actually start drinking until I was in my 30s so I didn't have to suffer being broke at a bar.
Even outside of pubs and restaurants. Six packs and cases in the grocery store are all hugely inflated. Since I like beer, I got an old freezer and built a kegerator out of it and now buy my beer by the keg. (For now) keg prices are barely reasonable. $10 for a glass of beer at a restaurant?? Fuck right off with that.
I don't drink alcohol or coffee, so I can't really relate to the others.
I will admit to having good experiences going to the theater with friends and/or family, but I don't really enjoy watching a movie with strangers. Nowadays if I want to watch a movie with friends, I will simply invite them over and we'll watch it together.
More power to you if you like going to a theater, I'm not trying to convince you to stop, just that I don't feel the value-add is worth it to me anymore. Decent TVs have gotten so cheap that I just prefer to watch movies at home.
My ideal movie experience is to go during the day towards the end of a run when there's a fair chance the theatre will either be empty or almost empty.
But I haven't even done that for a while.
If it's going to be crowded - no thanks.
Tangentially, because my gf works in opera I've been to some productions, and real theatre - a real stage, with real people, and real stage effects - can have a presence and magic that cinema can't touch.
So I'd much rather spend money on that now. It's physically less comfortable because of the seats, but as an experience it's so much more hands-on, hand-made, and satisfying, and creatively it leaves so much more space for atmosphere and implication.
I live in NYC and go to some form of Broadway production about once a year, primarily because my mom really likes it and so it's something to do when she comes to visit
I don't dislike it, but it's also pretty expensive and it's not something I'm terribly passionate about. I agree that it's a little different though; each production is a little unique, and seeing it in person is a bit more of a visceral experience.
I am with you on everything but the TV speakers. They are awful because TVs are so thin. They are running into pure physics. Get a nice soundbar, and it's a huge upgrade. Get one with separate rear speakers and a sub, and it's pretty great.
But the experience is way better than when we were kids. Watching Jurassic Park on a 19-inch CRT with mono audio was nothing like going to the theater. The delta between home and cinema was massive. Now I have a 77-inch OLED with 4K HDR and an Atmos sound setup. I'd take my home setup over a generic cinema screen. Only the premium large format is a noticeable upgrade. It's hard to justify shelling out a ton of money for the movie and snacks for similar audio/visual quality to home, and the risk that the person next to me is checking their phone the entire time (happened a year ago, and it's super distracting in a dark theater).
I buy popcorn kernels in bulk at my local grocery store, and we go through a lot of popcorn. It might cost $10 a year in kernels to regularly eat popcorn at home when you pop it yourself.
Yeah, I have decent speakers too. Should have clarified, the speakers on the TV are generally dogshit. Still, a decent soundbar can be had for less than $200 [1], and a very good sound system can be had for less than $500, especially if you're ok with something used.
After I made the mistake of reading the nutrition label on the back of Takis and potato chips, I bought a Stir Crazy popcorn maker [2] started making popcorn at home very regularly. Popcorn isn't exactly "good" for you, but it's not nearly as bad for you as basically chips. I buy the kernels in bulk on Amazon, and I have no idea how much I spend on popcorn but I don't think it could be more than $20 a year, even with three people living in my house.
If you want to real movie theater taste, there is also Flavacol [3]. This is what a lot of theaters will actually use to get the distinctive "movie theater popcorn" taste.
I like to go to the theater, but I've also got several grand in AV at home, largely because of what I find dissatisfying about the modern movie experience.
My grandfather told me until the 1960s, tickets were for all-day entry. Show up whenever for whatever was playing, which was generally run on loop. You could step out for a smoke, get a drink, eat at a local diner, and then head back in and possibly catch where you left off, or maybe pay a dime fee for re-entry. At some point, they started closing the doors after the feature started, and from there we got the modern business model.
At home, I can still do all of those things, and more.
I've had the same thoughts, also I sure don't miss the theater experience of having your shoes sticky with soda. God forbid you drop something on the floor like your phone, and have to feel around for it in the dark.
The last time I went to a theater, I went to the first showing of the movie for the day. We were the only people in the theater. 30 minutes into the movie, the projection suddenly shut off and all the lights turned on. After sitting there for about 10 minutes, we went out to talk to a staff member about it, and they told us that the computer said there was no one in the theater so they should shut it off. Long story short, they did not end up turning it back on, and referred us to the customer support hotline to try and get our money back. And this might be a little ageist, but there's something infuriating about a condescending teenager acting like this is somehow our fault. Yeah, no thank you.
Wow, that’s really a never again experience. Regardless of whether you got your money back or not, your anecdote makes clear that the movie theater business is on autopilot with extraction set to high. Last time for me the pre movie high volume advertising shower totally put me off from ever set foot in a movie theater again. The volume was so cranked up that it was distorting the sound so badly it was all unintelligible. There was nobody in charge to turn that down and it went on like that for 10 minutes. That was to me a never again experience.
I remember when I was watching Kick-Ass in the theater, there were some teenagers trying to be funny the entire time.
I initially very politely asked them if they could stop talking because we're trying to watch the movie, but they didn't take that very seriously.
After another ten minutes of their commentary I yell very loudly "SHUT THE FUCK UP!". Extremely loud, I suspect everyone in the theater heard me pretty clearly. I'm a pretty big guy and I have a very loud and deep voice, and of course the theater is dark, so they might have assumed I was more threatening than I actually am. The teenagers shut up for the rest of the movie.
The thing is, though, it kind of ruined the rest of the movie for me. The entire time I'm sitting there, kind of worked up and annoyed that I had to yell at some kids and ruin their Friday night.
I've certainly had good times in theaters too, I like movies, but I've grown a bit tired of it. Now generally the only time I go to the theater is the live showings of The Room.
I complain about movie costs while I watch movies at home, drive a VW that was under $40k new, live in a state with a minimum wage over $17 an hour, and refuse to pay $14 plus tip to a food truck that doesn't provide seating when I can pay $12 and no tip at a fast food restaurant that does provide dine-in eating.
Some of us live our principles, we're not all just whinging hypocrites.
When my wife and I first started dating, we went to one of those cheap second-run theaters.
I liked that theater because it was super cheap (like seriously $1.50 for a ticket because it showed out of date movies). One time when she and I were watching The Purge, I hear this kind of squishy noise from right behind me.
I turn around, and a guy is getting a handjob. I motion to my wife that we need to move a few seats over.
You know, The Purge isn't the worst movie ever but I gotta admit that it's not a movie that ever really turned me on either. To each their own, I suppose.
From that point forward we always called that the Handjob Theater.
There's way more middlemen then when people went to the movies in the 1950s, it's not that complicated. Back then, the theater got the film roll in a USPS delivery, and the people that manned the popcorn were high schoolers. Over the years we have injected lots of lawyers at every level of this and, alas, everything about "watching a movie" is more expensive.
If all of those things are true, then the conclusion is that theaters can’t operate in a way that wins my business. That would be unfortunate, but it’s not contradictory. It also seems to be that pretty much true, as I see a movie in a theater maybe once a year.
Actually, yes, I do think that netflix could do their job much cheaper. I use putflix, which uses put.io for $0.99 per month. Better quality streaming than netflix, no forced ads, and they can make it work for $1. Maybe it's the model where my monthly subscription pays for their entire catalog that's broken. Maybe it should just be a la carte licensing.
Either way, until the industry lets me pay directly to the org that literally made the movie, I'll just pirate.
I do want to pay the artists that make the films. I think the most viable way to do this is via cryptocurrency associated with social media accounts, and then validate ownership by having owners post a magic validation link. This way I can send artists money and it's on them to go get it if they want it.
putflix is criminal theft. They pay nothing to people who make movies. You can drive the cost to zero by downloading torrents directly from pirate bay.
If you did want to pay the artists then you would pay for netflix of rent/buy from a number of places (amazon video, youtube, apple).
Your cryptocurrency fantasy is just a way to rationalize stealing.
> rent/buy from a number of places (amazon video, youtube, apple).
It's just "rent", there's no buy option from any of these people, no matter what their site says. If they can revoke your ownership at any time, for any reason, then you don't own it. And if you don't own it, then you're not buying it.
I get the motivation to not pay these crooks, and instead pay the actual people that made the movie direct.
I believe they wrote that it is consistent to find sufficient utility from a $14 grilled cheese sandwich and also find insufficient utility from a whatever price movie theater experience.
It isn’t written out, but when people complain about the price of anything, they are complaining the price to utility ratio. Not exactly profound stuff, but that is basically what it is, most people don’t get a sufficiently better experience in theaters in today’s world.
The extension of my logic to Netflix would be, if I think their prices are too high and that causes me not to subscribe, and their prices are so high because they need to pay very high salaries, then there’s just no way that Netflix can exist in a form that I would subscribe to.
> the conclusion is that theaters can’t operate in a way that wins my business
They can, if studios gave them a better deal: "Most if not all the ticket price goes directly into the studio's pockets."
That is not a fact of nature, but the studio's whim. If they want to drive theaters out of business and send all their customers to the pirate bay, they are more than welcome to.
Where is that? Tickets here are only $7-10 each (except maybe some IMAX or similar showings) and two drinks and popcorn would be $15-25 for two people (size dependent). This is in Colorado.
EDIT: I was going off of memory, but matinee/child/senior pricing is apparently $9.75 at the theater I usually go to, evening is $13.25 (I never go in the evening, had forgotten what that price was). They have a two drink and popcorn combo for $22.10. So the worst case of evening prices (again, not considering IMAX, just regular screens and seats) for two with that combo is $48.60. That's not cheap, but it's not $86 either. And if you're willing to share the drink and go to a matinee you can cut the price to $34.80. This is a Cinemark, a pretty big theater chain.
I thought tickets had more standard pricing across markets. For a standard ticket here in SF -- (I know we're comparing probably the highest end to the lowset end here) -- its $22. For IMAX its about $30, at your standard AMC. Indie theatres are not cheaper and are often more expensive.
7 dollar tickets I haven't seen since elementary school
Other side of the pond here (western Europe), but I pay 6 in an indie cinema, 12 if I went to IMAX and similar (which I never do because most of those are dubbed).
Popcorn and drinks is usually roughly the same price as the ticket, though the smaller ones frequently forbid it - they claim for the experience, I wonder if it's that or not wanting to clean between passes.
Go on a Tuesday or Wednesday and tickets are 50% off at AMC (and maybe other theaters). While still not cheap, that gets you down to $16.49 for an imax showing at the metreon AMC and $9.49 for a standard screen.
IMAX opening week is a lot, $25-35. After a while it can drop to $20 or so. Regular is more like $20-25 opening week and drops to $12-15.
I don't bother with popcorn and soda, it's grossly over priced. Like $10 for a small popcorn the size of a pint. I buy a 0.5L bottle at the grocery store next to the cinema and some M (our M&Ms), maybe $10.
Though lately I've been going a lot to the local cinemateque. Not only are tickets around $7 regardless, they mostly show classic movies so seldom worse than the new stuff. They show popular movies too, recently saw Heat there, first time I saw it at the big screen since the premiere. Still packed a punch.
I thought that you're being a little too critical. Others should know that Norway is a country with relatively high costs of living.
The minimum wage for a cleaner is 46k per year ($23\h). And your boss better not try any shenanigans, because you're most likely unionized and shouldn't really be messed with.
I've found $18 ticket for opening week for Hail Mary in my city. Most of them were at $23, but that's for the premium sall, with shaking seats or other fancy stuff.
So a person with a job looked down upon in most other countries can still get one ticket for an hour of work.
Reason I've felt compelled to reply was because cinema tickets always felt cheap to me in Norway, compared to more like 2h of work for minimum wage worker in Poland where I originally come from. Compared to any other prices like $15 for a beer at a bar or $30+ for a bottle of vodka in the alcohol shop* they just always felt like a steal. YMMV OFC.
*Interesting trivia: The alcohol shop is called Vinmonopolet and it really is a monopoly. The only company allowed to sell alcohol above 4.7% is run by the state. They have shops in towns, and if you live far from one (like most of northern Norway past the polar circle) you're most likely getting your alcohol from homebrew mafia instead.
I wasn't trying to be critical actually, as for non-opening weeks I agree, it's not bad at all. I mainly just wanted to provide a point of comparison.
IMAX opening week is a bit more but are comparable to mid-range concert tickets. And it really is a big screen, so can definitely be worth it.
The snacks and drinks at the cinema is wild though I think. As a comparison the M's they sell are twice the price and half the size of that from the grocery store. I get that they want to make some money on it, but 4x the price is just too much for me.
Here in DC is pretty similar - I just checked the Silver Spring Regal and it’d be $82 plus tax for an 8pm showing tonight. I think part of this is the push to promo/membership programs — if you’re price sensitive, you’re not paying $9.54 for a medium soda (not making that up) so they make their margin on the people who just pay and everyone else gets some kind of discount program which gives the company data mining / ad revenue opportunity.
Then I guess you aren't familiar with the 20 minutes of trailers, 1 minute of Cocacola ad and 2 minutes of other completely irrelevant content before the movie actually begins.
And worse, it's not even consistent, they show different amounts of trailers based on the movie/showing! If you show up 20 minutes late, you might miss the start for some movies and yet still have another 15 minutes of trailers for others.
Well at least it's not Amazon prime where they now interrupt the movie for the same ad/trailer 3 for weeks unless you pay extra again.
Fwiw I always enjoyed the trailers at the movies, no the other ads I could very much do away with (and I used to purposefully come late to shows to miss the ads).
I don't necessarily hate the trailers per se, but this is about time management.
If the whole preshow is 10 minutes like in the theater where I used to live a few years ago, that is still somewhat more acceptable. But these days, with 20-25 min of preshow, were I to arrive at the showtime, I'd be looking at spending 1hr extra just to see a movie compared to watching it home (consider the time it takes to travel and maybe wait in the line for concessions).
I'm sure that's what lots of people do and many people are totally fine with this. Not me. I have got too much going on to spare that 1hr, especially on a weekday evening. I have to intentionally leave late to arrive on time to justify even going to the theater at all.
As a customer, though, I don't really care about the theater's pricing structure. If I'm paying for a pricey ticket, I don't expect to be advertised to. If the theater experience is lousy, I won't go to the theater.
Not a conventional theater, but I recently went to Vidiots in Los Angeles and enjoyed myself so much I went back a week later. The location I went to has two theaters—37 seat and 270 seat, both with comfortable seating and an excellent picture/sound. Most people who go are kind of movie nerds, so everyone was super respectful. And they don't really play blockbusters, so you don't get that kind of crowd. They seem to be doing well, and I really hope the model works and is reproducible.
Oh, and it was $11 for one of the tickets, $13 for another. I don't remember how much a beer cost, but it was on par with (and maybe less than) local bars.
At least in LA/Hollywood movies still hold a little bit of respect. People are in here complaining about trailers before a movie, like it's not a 100 year tradition.
This seems key, the more comments I read here about cinema theatres and their crowds. Maybe the local (indie) cinematheque is the best movie theatre for money/quality ratio.
Regals unlimited pass and their snack saver has made movies a no brainer for me and my friends
coupled with their monthly themed events showing older movies we almost always have multiple things we want to see and often go multiple times a week, especially during the gloomier winter months!
At last check i was at almost 25 visits this year, just saw F1 again on saturday and off to see Project Hail Mary tonight
In the millennial suburbs some people have converted their garages into small indie move theaters with good sound systems and people from around the neighborhood show up to watch obscure movies together and eat barbecued food.
Is this actually a broad trend, or more just your personal experience? There is very little that could get me to move back to the suburbs, but this kind of thing is compelling.
What theater is that at? Sounds like a mega chain like AMC or Regal. The local indie theater we go to in one of the 5 largest American cities has never been over $15 per ticket and adding popcorn and a drink is maybe $10 more on top.
Do they get first-run releases? Around here AMC has some sort of exclusive on that. And their theatres are disgusting. Sticky floors, dirty seats, just gross.
I haven't been to a movie in a theater in at least 10 years.
Where do you live? I'm in a HCOL area and just checked that same combo for a Friday night premiere and it's more like ~$70.
The markup on concessions has always been a thing but it really is just insane to think the unit economics on 2 sodas and a popcorn must be like 50 cents and selling it from $26 (in my area). Clearly they must make the most money this way but it is just crazy that anyone outside of significant disposable income even considers buying concessions. It's priced in such a way where anyone outside of the top 5% income brackets should just laugh at the price and view it as an extreme luxury good and not ever even consider buying anything.
That is the problem, everyone complains about Netflix, Prime and co, but going to cinema currently can pay for a couple of months in subscriptions.
I get the experience and that there are employees to pay, and such, but if companies want people to still go the movies, they need to ramp those prices down in some way.
In Europe I only go to alternative cinemas which happen to be part of the movie pass network, called Gildepass in Germany.
This isn't why Hollywood is dying. Hollywood is dying because it's cheaper to make movies elsewhere. We're (probably) still going to have movies for a long time. In the same way that we still have cars long after Detroit "died".
I wouldn’t even say that. It’s dying because people are spending a lot of time watching YouTube, instagram and TikTok. A lot of people now just don’t watch a lot of long form content.
Yep, there's lot of great movies and series coming out of other places, like UK, Europe, Japan, Korea, and many more. And a lot of stuff people think is "Hollywood" is actually being made in Canada.
I still go to arthouse movies regularly, mostly because it forces me to give them undivided attention
Although, I’ll admit I go way less often than two years ago when I was full time WFH. Which begs the question if I just went for a reason to leave the house
I don't mind the higher price. The place near me is a small cinema and not a chain, the food is excellent and they bring it to your seat. And if you go during the week it's pretty quiet. I'm sure they make most of their money from the restaurant anyway. There's another place like it a bit of a further drive but it to be even quieter, most times we've been it's just us.
Here in Finland this would cost about 50 euro, which is still a lot, but for me the main reason to never go to a movie theater again is that even after paying all of this money, the first 15 minutes is filled with advertisement, then 15 more minutes of movie trailers, then some "IMAX" or whatever intro video. By the time the movie starts, I feel like I've been watching tiktok for a day.
Movie theaters around me (even the high end ones) have 30 minutes of commercials and previews before the movie, so I typically arrive 25 minutes after showtime, no problem.
However it is still frustrating that they expect you to tolerate 30 minutes of commercials after paying so much money.
For a long time now I've felt that there's only situation where it makes sense. That's movies where it is something about it would make it much more enjoyable on IMAX or similar with a professional sound system. So something in the visual spectacle category.
For any normal movie I'd rather just watch it from my couch. But for the once in a while, over the top, blockbuster I'll still go to a theater.
I enjoyed each one in the theater but I tried watching Avatar: The Way of Water at home and despite having an entire media room devoted to good sound, proper lighting well calibrated projector and such it was not all that great. The movie fell a little flat without the theater experience to go with it.
I saw the limited run in advance to the 3rd one coming out in theaters again and it was good in that setting, as a reference point for my experience
Exactly, Avatar was literally what I was picturing when I wrote that. They're not good movies. But damn they're fun to watch in 3D, on a giant screen, and with great sound.
That's not to say that all movies in this category are *only* worth watching in the theater like Avatar is. For instance I would have still enjoyed the recent Dune movies either way but they were a lot better with all the pomp & circumstance.
At that point what you are describing is a theme park ride. It only works a handful of times though before people get bored of it and want something else.
Tent-pole black movies? Basically anything Ryan Coogler or Jordan Peele are involved in. They're a case where the unfortunate stereotype might work out in your favor, if you're looking for a group experience that heightens with shared energy and a visual-and-sonic spectacle. (Well, assuming it's true.)
Or maybe it's just a horror/Marvel thing. Weapons and Endgame had a similar audience feel to Sinners and Black Panther.
Definitely not during Chris Nolan films. It's hard enough to hear his dialogue when it's dead silent.
Where I go it's about $33 for two tickets bought online and probably $20 for those snacks, though we usually share a drink and a popcorn. The theater is still usually empty.
The market-clearing price is nearly zero except for some new releases. Oppenheimer was sold out in its first weekend, for example.
Anyone who went to movies before about 1999 remembers them being a lot more popular.
I don't know where people get these crazy prices. Try to find a little hole-in-the-wall theater. I like the local Landmark Cinema. It is about $8 a ticket and I skip on the junk food.
There is another theater on the other side of town that does midnight showings of Rocky Horror Picture Show. Those kinds of places are also cheap.
I think it's more relevant to talk about theaters showing current new movies because that's kind of what Hollywood is focused on. I'm in a more expensive city where a weeknight non-matinee will run $20 a pop for a current release. Comfort is average but food is pretty solid. Not Alamo, but similar service level. Not unusual for a couple to leave paying more like 80 after concessions.
Alamo food and service have absolutely tanked over the last year. They no longer prohibit phones during the film. In fact, now they require one to order food. They have completely undermined their entire value proposition. Alamo Drafthouse is a walking corpse.
> 2 tickets, 2 sodas, 1 popcorn.
> $86 dollars.
> Don't know if I'll ever go to a conventional movie theater again.
We almost never go to regular theaters anymore. IMAX feels worth it for something like F1 or Top Gun where it’s all about the visual spectacle, otherwise meh.
We go to Alamo Drafthouse a lot tho. A little pricey but the experience of watching a movie in comfy seats over a fairly decent restaurant dinner is fantastic for certain kinds of movies. Peaky Blinders was the most recent. Tommy Shelby paired with a good cocktail or two, fantastic.
Also I don’t know how Alamo achieves this, but people there are really good about noise and other bullshit. I think it’s because they do in fact kick people out for being annoying.
They no longer prohibit phones during the film. In fact, now they require one to place an order. This has just started and is rolling out to every market. It completely undermined their entire value proposition. Alamo Drafthouse is a walking corpse.
I remember my parents complaining about how expensive concessions were when I was a kid in the 90s too, and sometimes we would hit the gas station first and stuff snacks in my mom's bag to sneak them in to the theater. They also complained about prices if we couldn't do the Tuesday matinee.
Not sure anything's changed. The movie theater experience has always been expensive and I think your bill is pretty much in line with inflation.
> The movie theater experience has always been expensive.
I don't think they were that expensive in the 1930s and 40s, maybe into the 50s. Supposedly, in the 1930s, they were around 25 cents, which $5 in today's money.
We've just seriously gone of the rails on pricing for some reason, but it probably started before I was born (in 75) and has just gotten a lot worse over time (so in the 90s, they were expensive, but are even more expensive today).
I stopped going sometime mid-2000s, not because of the cost or the quality of movies, but because of the quality of my fellow movie watchers, who were pretty awful to be honest (at least in Silicon Valley at the time):
- Lord of the Rings: a family came in after the movie started with a cluster of helium balloons, each of which eventually got loose and floated around the theatre. A small balloon creates an outsized shadow on the screen when it floats in front of the projector (e.g., sometimes a third of the picture would disappear).
- A Beautiful Mind: Several guys, in different spots in the theatre, would wait for a quiet moment in the movie and say loudly "Oh my beautiful mind". One guy had a squeaky seat, so each time he said his bit, he would squeak his chair 5 times.
- Panic Room: Two people directly behind us just laughed hysterically at seemingly every line in the movie.
Also, the advertisements went on too long (20 minutes maybe?) and were also rock-concert loud.
Last night, I watched Wolfs (Apple TV) in my living room with my spouse and we enjoyed it. It's not a great movie, but it's good, there are no ear-splitting advertisements, and the audience is well behaved.
Edit: Later in the 2000s I did see a few Coen brothers films in the theatre, and those were good experiences, but I still avoided the theatre for the most part.
we did the same thing and had to sit far right 2nd row because you need reservations long ahead of time to sit far enough back somewhere near the middle
meanwhile I saw a 50-inch tv at costco for $239, and a 98-inch tv for $1299
The people going to movies regularly are playing a different game.
The prices you see upfront like this are for "suckers". People who come in, don't think about price, and just pay whatever the cost is. McDonald's is like this now too.
People who are concerned about price though - they use the app, they get deals, and so forth. I've gone to movies and done the same thing - two tickets, two drinks, 1 popcorn and it was $30. This is because these movie theaters run "deals" all the time for this stuff.
You'll have to get used to this paradigm as it's the main way everything is priced now. There's not going to be a "one price for everyone" thing anymore. It's going to be dynamic and different pricing for everything.
Our local AMC theater would be $13 a ticket, $8 a drink, and $11 for popcorn (rounding up and assuming the largest sizes, although the prices are in a narrow band so the price difference between the least and most is under a dollar).
So, we’re looking at $53. Which is $33 less than wherever you’re at.
I also don’t know how standardized prices are across all AMC venues. So while Pokopia costs $70 everywhere, the same may not be true of theater tickets and concessions.
But yeah, it’s typically why we try to avoid theater concessions, because they’ve always been overpriced
Personally, I don't understand why people go to see films with a bunch of strangers and a nod to the HN crowd: with potentially disruptive or reactive people that distract the enjoyment. Unless it's some sort of film festival or a premiere where the director is there, movies are for teenagers and parents with children.
I'm not talking about the 1990s Times Square theaters with a whole other 'type' of audience, eh, member.
It's not even price for me - I'm happy to pay for an experience. I'm more annoyed that the theater is basically the worst place to watch a movie now.
The silver screen has a contrast ratio in the hundreds. A $300 consumer TV now looks significantly better than the blurry, muted, and muddled projector image.
Then the audio at theaters is always totally blown out and overly bassy and siblant. Fine for action, I guess, but it makes listening to dialogue exhausting.
And unless you get your favorite seat, you have to watch the movie skewed. God forbid you get a seat in the front and have to crane your neck the whole hour.
Meanwhile I can stay home, not deal with driving 20 minutes and interacting with the public, pay less, eat better food, get blitzed with friends, talk with my wife, have better visuals and audio, etc. Other than nostalgia, there's just no reason at all to go to a movie theater. It's become kind of outdated in an era of modern TVs to me.
I enjoy going to the theater to hear the guy next to me eating popcorn with his mouth open and maximum mandibular crunch. Also, I do enjoy the woman behind me that with her constant non-stop vocal reactions to everything onscreen (anything mildly sad --> "awww"; anything vaguely surprising --> "oooh"; ...).
Other highlights include the super bright EXIT signs flanking both sides of the screen -- helps me get immersed in the scene. The occasional loud bass rumble from the action movie playing one theater over also helps.
Seems crazy to me, always had to (presumed) view that cinema was cheap in the US, otherwise how is the business so big there?
In Spain I went to regular cinema this Sunday, 8 EUR per ticket per person, + ~10 EUR per person for snacks, so ~20 EUR per person for me and my wife.
Also got tickets to see Project Hail Mary at IMAX, 2 tickets for the premiere, and I paid 29.80 EUR for two tickets, thought it was expensive, but seems we're luckier than I thought :)
Cheapest tickets are £2.50 where I am in London. Maybe £4.50 at a stretch. £10 worse care scenario.
Granted, I don't know about sodas and popcorn, as we always bring or eat beforehand.
Having said that, home theatre is hard to beat but I'd still check a cinema every so often just to experience the group vibe. Nothing beats the collective vibe around a great movie - and worth the risk of shitty neighbours. Maybe I just love cinema.
It’s a communal thing. It’s more than just the sport it’s also about being out with other fans, showing support and usually friendly ribbing of the opposing teams fans from time to time.
That is how it was explained to me when I said something similar
It is surprising that such a large number of people continue to fall victim to fraud at the cinema. High-quality televisions and sound systems are now available at a reasonable price. It has been 12 years since I last attended a movie screening. All content will be available on-demand within a month of the theatrical release. Popcorn maker at home and drinks.
Unless you have a private theater room its not quite the same thing as watching first run movie in a darkend crowded theater - and even that misses the social aspect for an anticipated picture
The communal experience is special
On top of that most people don't have the attention span to sit through a film without opening their phones - film is supposed to be about capturing your attention not just entertainment
Spotify's DJ also isn't an LLM. It's just a shuffle with structured interludes and a TTS engine. IIRC it launched in early 2023 and has been the same since.
The future is narrow bespoke apps custom tailored for exactly that one single users use case.
An example would be if the user only ever works with .jpg files, then you don't need to support any of the dozens of other formats an image program would support.
I cannot stress enough how many software users out there are only using 1-10% of a program's capability, yet they have to pay for a team of devs who maintain 100% of it.
"The future" is fiction. It's a blank canvas where you can make a fingerpainting of any fantasy you like. Whenever people tell me about "the future" I know they're talking absolute rubbish. And I also like your fantasy! But it probably won't happen.
I call it "Psychics for Programmers." People will scoff at psychics and fortune telling and palm reading, but then the same people will listen to Elon or some founder or VC and be utterly convinced that that person is a visionary and can describe the future.
It's just reading the room. People hate having to use their computers through the lens of quasi-robot humans (saying that as one of those robots). They hate having to pay monthly just so dumb features and UI overhauls can be pushed on them.
They just want the software to do the few things they need it to do. AI labs are falling over themselves to remove the gate keeping regular people from using their computing device the way they want to use it. And the progress there in the last few years is nothing short of absolutely astounding.
> the progress there in the last few years is nothing short of absolutely astounding
Yet, all the astounding progress notwithstanding, I don't have a suite of bespoke tools replacing the ones I depend on. I cannot say "hey claude, make me a suite of bespoke software infrastructure monitoring and operational tooling tailored to my specific needs" and expect anything more than a giant headache and wasted time. So maybe we just need to wait? Or maybe it's just not actually real. My view is unless you show me a working demo it's vaporware. Show me that the problem is solved, don't tell me that it might be solved later sometime.
And what exactly is preventing you from building bespoke software for "infrastructure monitoring and operational tooling tailed to your specific needs"?
I could certainly imagine building myself some sort of dashboard. It would seem like a prime use case.
You want to hear about a problem solved? Recently I extended a tool that snaps high resolution images to a Pixel art grid, adding a GUI. I added features to remove the background, to slice individual assets out of it automatically, and to tile them in 9-slice mode.
Could I have realistically implemented the same bespoke tool before AI? No.
> And what exactly is preventing you from building bespoke software for "infrastructure monitoring and operational tooling tailed to your specific needs"?
Let's say I emit roughly 1TB of telemetry data per day--logs, metrics, etc. That's roughly what you might expect from medium sized tech company or a specific department (say, security) at a large company. There is going to be a significant infrastructure investment to replicate datadog's function in my organization, even if I only use a small subset of their product. It's not just "building a dashboard" it's building all the infrastructure to collect, normalize, store, and retrieve the data to even be able to draw that dashboard.
The dashboard is the trivial part. The hard part is building, operating, and maintaining all the infrastructure. Claude doesn't do a very good job helping with this, and in some sense it actually hinders.
EDIT: I'm not saying you shouldn't take ownership of your telemetry data. I think that's a strategically (and potentially from a user's perspective) better end result. But it is a mistake to trivialize the effort of that undertaking. Claude is not going to vibeslop it for you.
I agree, that does not seem like a smart undertaking. I was thinking more of a dashboard within the existing software, or above it.
For my use case I wanted bespoke software to work with Pixel art, but obviously I would not try to build Photoshop or Aseprite from scratch. I needed only specific functionality and I was able to build that in a way fitting my workflow better than any existing software could.
I was able to build it with Claude Code and Codex. Maybe the implementation is sloppy, I did not care to check. The program works, and it's like a side project to my side project. It would not have been possible in the past, I would have needed to work with what Aseprite offers out of the box.
Turns out that knowing what a plain text file is will be the criterion that distinguishes users who are digitally free from those locked into proprietary platforms.
Many parents are extremely interested in quickly building digital tools for their kids (education and entertainment) that they know are free from advertising, social media integration, user monitoring etc.
That may be true. But you also have to give the average parent more credit by assuming they don't want tech companies spying on their children and forcing their toxic platforms on them.
There are well attended parent evenings in our school on that topic.
Thinking about it, we should turn these into vibe coding hackathons where we replace all the ad-ridden little games, learning tools, messengers we don't like with healthy alternatives.
Yes, because the current software paradigm (a shed/barn/warehouse full of tools to suite every possible users every possible need) doesn't make sense when LLMs can turn plain English into a software tool in the matter of minutes.
>LLMs can turn plain English into a software tool in the matter of minutes.
Unless LLMs can read minds, no one will bother to specify, even in plain english with the required level of detail. And that is assuming the user has the details in mind, which is also something pretty improbable...
You need to think outside the box a little. They're not going to need to write a requirements doc from scratch. They'll tell it to copy a piece of software which is already established and make some customisations or improvements based on their needs. This is a few sentences.
Its also useless without the rest of the machine, which is likely the absolutely most complex thing we can build, except maybe things like the stellarator.
Health care providers carry immense blame. It's full of passionless people in it for the outsized paychecks, who once inside will just seek whatever local minimum to stay employed.
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