Over the years, I've put together a home theater with a big screen, great sound and quality seating. I no longer go to public theaters. During that time, based on quite a few excursions to public theaters, a number of notable disadvantages consequent to public theatergoing have become clear to me:
- No ability to pause — bathroom breaks and snack fetches cause content to be missed
- Unclean public bathrooms — not interested in sharing my bathroom breaks, or having to wait
- Ridiculously expensive snacks, and usually they suck sour balls anyway
- People spilling their drinks, providing un-asked-for shoe washing
- People smacking their lips over their popcorn or whatever, and/or loudly chewing with their mouths open like insufficiently socialized 3-year olds
- Children (and adults) who interfere with the experience by crying and/or sobbing and/or just general yapping
- Over-sharing: coughs, sneezes, B.O., bad breath, perfume overloads (why do so many old ladies drench themselves in perfume? One of life's great mysteries...)
- Theater ads and admonitions are incredibly obnoxious
- You can't replay — or skip — previews
- The watch-once-with-strangers nature of a theater ticket as opposed to the watch-many-times-with-family-and/or-friends nature of a blu-ray
- You're stuck with their schedule, not yours
- Crying babies, babbling teenagers, any and all generally loud and obnoxious theatergoers
- The inability to go back and replay a part of the movie when the dialog is so poorly miked and/or spoken that you can't understand it easily (all too common)
- Somewhere to drive to when there's actually no need to drive
- Waiting in lines. For tickets. For snacks. For the bathroom, for crying out loud.
- Trying to find parking
- The possibility of poor viewing angles/distances
- Non-cuddly, anti-romantic, and outright uncomfotable seating
- Then there are the idiots who don't turn off their phones, or sit there with the damned things glaring in the corner of my eye
- Theaters can't compete with the resale value of a blu-ray if the film turns out to be something you don't favor