You Are Wrong Evil And Bad Dreamed 6295 days ago | | 893 words

I buy DVDs. I love movies. According to Delicious Library I own 103 of them (not counting those I’ve lent or lost along the way). I really love movies. They are my escape from life. They’re my entertainment. My emotional connection. My cultivator of ideas.

What I get tired of, in front of every new DVD I buy is the obligatory FBI Anti-Piracy Video tm. I’ve bought the DVD. I’ve brought it home. I’ve made it through the plastic wrapping, the 3 stickers affixed to the top, bottom and middle of the case. I’ve freed my precious video experience from its tomb with wide eyes and an eager soul.

Only to be yelled at. Hey, I bought this thing. I paid good money for it. Money I made working. Money I could use on something else.

But I went and bought a DVD with it. And now my reward is being screamed at by the FBI. Telling me it’s wrong to steal things like shoes, parkas and the Empire State Building.

It would be really nice is instead of using their old, tired, ineffective, heavy-handed approach to piracy. They’d actually try to innovate.

For instance, would it be possible to detect when a disc is being played legally instead of being ripped to a hard drive? If so, could you display the anti-piracy warning to those people? And could you loop it about a hundred times, making the ripped file 20 Gigs and unusable.

Is this even possible? I have no idea, that’s why I’m asking.

How about instead of putting out a pardae of badly-thought-out-and-even-worsely-written sequels you actually make some quality film. People will pay for quality. If a movie is good, people will see it. If it sucks, no one is going to see it, no matter how much you hype it.

As the consumer of media in many forms, it leaves a bad taste in my mouth when I’m yelled at for stealing something when I’ve clearly not stolen it.

It’s not like people are unaware what stealing is. If they are, and they’re watching movies with R ratings, then their parents have clearly failed them. If you’re 17+ then you know the difference between stealing and what it entails.

It’s very clear. The FBI has better things to do than re-explain it to us.

The movie industry keeps wondering why it’s losing money. And no one is going to theaters anymore.

Well, is it any wonder?

Regal Cinemas (our local overlords) just raised their prices across the boards to go sit in mildly-comfortable chairs and view low-res-in-comparison to what I could see at home movies in huge rooms that are either 100 degrees or subzero.

And you can enjoy a wide variety of 200% marked up candies and popped corn. What’s not to love?

I mean I absolutely love movie theaters. I don’t know what it is about them, but I really honestly enjoy going to movies on “the big screen” despite owning a high definition projector at home.

But they’re making it harder and harder to justify the expense of going. I mean why would I pay $10 for a film for a single viewing that I could own for less than double that?

The plethora of remakes, sequels, and totally unoriginal filth they’re putting on the screen does not strengthen their case to fleece us.

So this is not an entire thousand word extravaganza of me griping here are a couple of ideas theaters could put into place to justify their high ticket prices.

  1. Upgrade your equipment. Movies are grainy. Upgrade your equipment to match what is available to me at no great expense in my living room. To get and keep me as a customer you’ve got to lure me out of my home entertainment setup.
  2. Stop charging so much for food. You want to make money on refreshments then make them affordable. You’ll make up your lost revenue with quantity.
  3. Offer better food choices. If you’re going to overcharge for food, at least offer a better selection. Keep some fruit on hand. Perhaps a salad. Hell, do pizzas and other meal-type foods.
  4. Rethink theater design. Couches. Bean bag chairs. Comfy chairs. Don’t think of a movie theater as a human slaughterhouse where the goal is to pack as many bodies into a single space as possible. Think of it instead as a laid-back coffee house artsy vibe place. Somewhere you’d want to go and hang out with friends. Give me a big table I can sit at with 4 or 5 people where we can all see the film. Give me a bean bag chair on the floor so I can stretch out and watch the film.
  5. Cell phone jamming. The world will not end if you see a movie and can’t take a call. It won’t. Promise. Nothing ruins a movie quicker than someone hollering at their boy/girl throughout a film.
  6. Patrols theaters to remove rude patrons. If someone is loudly talking, using their cell phone, or generally disrupting the rest of the people in their theater, remove them. They’re paying to use the facility. It’s not their god-given right. Everyone is so happy to sue someone because they feel they’re offended or were treated unjustly. Deal with it people.

    I know some/most/ of these suggestions would require major cash to complete and would be totally unfeasible to the theaters themselves. But there are some of my ideas.

    What would you do to make the theater-going experience better?

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