Adam@Home by Rob Harrell for May 28, 2010

Well, the studios are trying to bring that experience home, by putting tons of ads and previews at the beginning of DVDs and attempting to lock-out skipping past them.

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maybe it is worth the extra money to watch on demand cable

At least if you’re watching the moving on DVD, you can do something else while the ads are running.

I don’t know if this is the norm nationwide, but out here the onscreen ads are before the previews (I know, previews are ads of a sort). The car and soda ads are playing from the moment you walk into the theater, but the lights are still up (permitting reading) and people talk freely. At the advertized start-time, the lights go down and the “Coming Attractions” start. They generally total no more than 15 minutes, and I hate to miss the previews; they’re the best way to keep up on what’s coming out in the future.

For all the prices and chatter and so on, I still find watching a DVD to be no substitute for seeing a movie in a theater. Movie-going is a communal experience rather than a solitary one, and it’s immersive in a way that no home theater, however big the screen or sound system, can possibly be…

Looks like Brian Basset is Canadian or European - he slashes his 7s.

fritzoid, what I think is …. The best thing about watching a DVD is that you can pause it while you go to the restroom without missing anything. When you’re a senior and have to go, you better do it.

That is an issue, certainly, Shirttail. But the choice between home viewing and theater viewing involves trade-offs, whichever way you choose. For me, the benefits of the big screen (for action movies, Sci-Fi, animated features – anything where the visuals are important) and a good crowd (particularly for comedies; laughter is infectious) outweigh the conveniences of watching in my living room. And while it’s convenient (and sometimes essential) to pause a movie on home video, it disrupts the flow of the work. You can’t pause a recording of a symphony without damaging its flow, and movies likewise are designed to be seen in one uninterrupted sitting (epic-length features which provide intermissions are at least constructed to accommodate them, the way American TV shows are paced around the commercial breaks).

“How to Tame Your Dragon” deserves to be seen on the big screen (I saw it in 2-D, though, and if I see it again I’ll spring for 3-D). But I’ve got “My Dinner with Andre” being delivered from Netflix this evening, and that probably won’t suffer a lot for being seen on a small screen.

That is actually named How to TRAIN your Dragon. I saw it in Imax 3D worth every penny. It’s next to impossible to recreate the movie-going experience for a blockbuster film like Iron Man. The studios want to deliver these movies at home simultaneously for a hefty price like $40. I certainly don’t mind a small art house film that doesn’t get wide bookings made available but not large event films

“How to TRAIN Your Dragon” is absolutely correct. My apologies for the error. (I frankly don’t care for IMAX, though; it’s TOO big. It overflows my field of vision rather than filling it.)

Haven’t watched “Andre” yet, but tonight I went to see “Letters from Juliet” in a theater. The movie was good, not great, but the scenery (Tuscany) was such that it was definitely worth seeing on the big screen. (It was also only $8 for a Friday evening showing in a first-run theater, which wasn’t bad at all.)

For the price of our family to go to the movies, we can usually buy the movie plus several days groceries, lol!! Some movies are must see at the theater (Avatar, for example. DVD did not compare), but generally, DVD is fine for us. We waited on Alice in Wonderland as we thought it would be too scary for the kids on the big screen but they loved it at home.

And studios wonder why the rates for video piracy are so high.