Are you an A/V geek?

[rsbeck]

Here's what I mean;

I love me a block-buster from time to time, but for my taste, block-buster and good movie go together about as often as Brad Pitt and that girl from the movie Precious.

My favorite movie list includes such pants flapping surround sound extravaganzas as;

The Graduate

Taxi Driver

Midnight Cowboy

Something About Mary

Memento

Lost in Translation

Super Bad

I bought a number of Demo type blu-rays when my theater was first completed -- and I think these are very important to have because you want to show your friends and family who've been worried cross-eyed about you since you started putting this thing together that you not only know what you're doing, but yours actually goes to 11.

I've gotten to know a lot of guys on these A/V forums and it seems like I constantly run into A/V enthusiasts who will only watch a blu-ray and only a blu-ray that has tons of eye candy and an awesome pants flapping surround mix.

Where do you fall?

Will you still watch a Standard Definition DVD in order to watch what you consider to be a great movie?

Will you watch a movie simply because it's loaded with "eye candy" and an awesome pants flapping surround mix -- even if you don't really care for the story and the acting is sub-par? More importantly, will you watch it a second time by yourself?

 

[Steve Williams]

I prefer Blu-Ray however I would say that just because a film is Blu-Ray doesn't mean its a better sound or video quality. I truly prefer Blu-Ray for those reasons and reserve my purchases for those blockbuster movies that will show off a system and besides these are movies that most have seen in the theaters. IMHO however if this is what people want then the cost to buy is way too high

 

[amirm]

Sad to say, I watch a lot of my "great" movies on the airplane. We are talking 8mm tape circa 1989 on United asia flights! I think Smithsonian has antiques better than the broken, decrepit machines UA still leaves on these airplanes. A ticket in first class costs $10K+ and you are watching the video on a broken 8 inch LCD whose brightness adjustment flickers up and down! But we digress.

Here is the point though. I watched Lost in Translation for the first time on United. Ditto for District 9. They were both fantastic despite the lousy, lousy video experience. Just watched Precious. OK, not a bad movie but I can't tell what all the fuss was about. That aside, the power of the movie is one that punches through this lousy experience and still entertains.

I bought one of my favorites on BD, Shawshank Redemption. I watched it I think for the 10th time when I bought the BD. I still got the same enjoyment I got from seeing it on cable, etc. No more. No less.

So my sense is that if the story is powerful, acting wonderful, cinematography sublime, it almost doesn't matter what you watch it on. Picture quality is always last in this list in my book.

That said, something like Baraka just doesn't have impact unless you are seeing it in its full glory...

 

[rsbeck]

That reflects a lot of my feelings, too. Great movies captivate and draw you in. Many of the movies I now have on blu-ray, I used to have on VHS and DVD and used to watch on a 32" 4:3 CRT TV.

There is one area, though, where I am certain that I have become an A/V geek;

I have fallen in love with watching movies in my theater!

I know you're planning to build a dedicated theater with a projector in your new home. I don't know if you've had one before, but if you haven't, I'll be curious to see if you get spoiled in the same way.

Since I built my theater, I have ventured out a few times to watch movies at the commercial cinema and I found myself completely underwhelmed.

The size of the screen was still impressive, but I was disappointed by things I'd never noticed before like how much light there is in the theater while movies are playing.

I found it distracting and it completely ruined the contrast on screen. In my theater, it is so dark the screen is the only thing that draws your attention.

That's also how I would call myself a geek. I put black carpet in the theater because it's better for contrast and makes the floor beneath the screen disappear.

The sound, although good, was not nearly as good as in my theater. It is simply impossible to get sound that is impressive as you can get if you build your theater correctly -- and excellent sound is at least 50% of the reason a movie not only draws you in but makes you feel like you're in the scene.

Tonight, my oldest boy and his friends were using the theater. My youngest is a real animal lover, so I bought Gorillas In The Mist on DVD so I could watch with her.

Since the theater was taken by older boys watching stuff my youngest daughter shouldn't see, she and I watched the movie in the family room on a 43" Pioneer Plasma.

On my god, the picture looked like a postage stamp!

I still enjoyed the movie, but I was missing the extra oomph, the immersiveness that comes from sitting 13' feet from a 9.5' Wide Screen.

My wife wanted me to leave the family room TV low tech for her. Really low tech. That's how she likes it. With the sound coming from the speakers in the TV.

Women, they're interesting creatures!

The picture seemed tiny and I was missing the sonics in the theater where it is so easy to understand dialogue.

So, I will watch standard DVD's upscaled to 1080 in my theater because a lot of great movies are not out on blu-ray.

I will watch dialogue driven movies that give my sub-woofer a day off.

But, I am spoiled by my theater.

I could just feel while watching Gorillas tonight that if we had been watching it in our theater, I not only would have enjoyed the movie, I would have felt like I was in the jungle with Diane Fossie!

 

[amirm]

We have had a dedicate theater in our primary home for 10 years. The "new" theater is for our "vacation" house (really our future retirement home). So when all done we will have two .

That said, our main theater gets used mostly by the kids and their friends. The play games and watch movies on it endlessly. Both my wife and I tend to "multi-task" and the theater environment doesn't lend itself to that. Of course, when I purchase a new Blu-ray movie that I expect to have a good A/V experience, I watch it there first but my wife often watches it in the family room.

 

[rsbeck]

my wife often watches it in the family room.

Sounds familiar. It was funny, she really wanted to be involved in designing the theater. In fact, she insisted on light colored carpet. After the theater was installed, I hated the light colored carpet -- too distracting! Plus, it was not good for contrast. After awhile, it was pretty much established that she was not going to spend as much time there as she thought -- she's a confirmed family room TV watcher -- low tech as possible. So, she relented and gave me the go ahead to do whatever would make me happy. Gotta love her for that. In went the black carpet and another sub-woofer!