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Back in the 90’s I was an audiophile and high end home theater nut. But I only assembled mid-fi equipment, and my home theater setup consisted of a Lexicon CP-1, Rotel RB 850 amp, Luxman 4 channel amp, 6 Celestion 3 speakers, and a dual 8” box subwoofer. I used Super VHS tapes and a JVC HRS 6700U. My home audio was a Halfer Iris preamp, NAD 502 CD player, Proton dbx & dolby tape deck, a Nakamichi DR3 tape deck, and I got a free Kenwood tuner and ADC Graphic equalizer that I hardly use.
Nowadays my modern speakers are cheap $80 a pair Best Buy Insignia speakers… Why? Because they are an undiscovered work of art in engineering! Carbon fiber cone, center soft dome tweeter, ported, gold plated rear connectors, and an internal standing wave sound canceling curved loudspeaker cabinet design that was state of the art! An awesome made in China deal! I was looking to hop them up by opening them and replacing the internal crossover with high end capacitors and inductors, but unfortunately you couldn’t open this speaker up. So I bought 3 pairs of these to use in a complete matched speaker home theater setup with my Lexicon CP-1, or else to use them as great computer speakers driven by an amp, but this would consume a lot of electricity because audio amps are electricity hogs… So I stuck with computer speakers for computers instead.
So with my mid fi home theater setup I used to watch many dolby movies back in the 90’s. One special test favorite was the flying biplane scene in Indiana Jones, - where he’s attacked by German Planes. It had great sound effects localization / directions to test out your home theater system.
But nowadays I rarely watch movies on a home theater system, and I rarely even watch TV too. I’ve changed to mostly getting my news from web news sources, and I mostly watch any movie through Netflix. I rarely go to the theaters to watch a movie, - the last time was for Lord of the Rings. And with the amount of emails I get exploding since 2005, now I only watch movies by my main computer while I process, save, or delete emails. It’s a great time saver for me doing these two things at once. Why, Elvis watched 3 tvs at once when I saw his entertainment room in Graceland.
And then many movies mostly stink nowadays, I hardly run into a good movie to see. Most of the movies I rent on Netflix are documentaries like the History Channel on WW2, etc…
I cannot abide movies that have been cut, have the pop-up bugs on the screen, or are otherwise tampered with. As an ex-projectionist, trained to see cue dots lasting 1/15th of a second, such stuff drives me bonkers. That leaves out watching almost all movies that are broadcast or cablecast. We also have bandwidth limitations because the internet is satellite feed. That means we watch DVDs from Netflix and Facets, a very few movies that I'm able to pick up cheap on VHS, and some I recorded off years ago.
I know all about the full theatre experience. When I was young we used to go to the plush Montreal theatres to see movies like "Around the World in 80 Days" and "This Is Cinerama." I've projected 70mm film as well as 35mm. I've worked with carbon arc lamps, scrims and waterfall curtains in an old Charles Lamb atmospheric theatre. Back in the 1970s, my "home" theatre was a 400 seat auditorium of a theatre I managed, used after the customers had gone home. (It was SERIOUSLY nice watching Star Wars there. ) I experienced "Earthquake" in Sensurround. (The special effects couldn't make up for the Irwin Allen plot and staging.) I've set up and done various versions of 3D (even written a couple of published articles).
If the most important thing to a viewer is high definition special computer effects, that is fine, but not our style. For us it is more about content and context. We still have our old Hitachi rear projection, some decent but not great speakers that do the job. The "willing suspension of disbelief" and being able to be enveloped by the characters and plot is what makes viewing enjoyable for my wife and me.
Multitasking destroys that. I might multitask a U.S. sitcom, but almost never a movie. We skim an hour of tv news in ten minutes, mostly to catch highlights of what people are "supposed" to believe. We do watch a few tv series, some that you may never have heard of, available through Netflix. "Life on Mars", other Brit and Canadian productions not commonly seen in the U.S. are decent.
If you like documentaries on WW II, maybe you would like Capra's original work as he followed the invasion, or that of Rosellini, like "Paisan" or "Rome", he did a few works around the theme. History Channel stuff is marginally accurate, but almost always is just a gloss of events.
If you are multitasking rather than getting involved, then maybe some of the old time radio shows would be fun for you. Old Time Radio : Free Audio : Download & Streaming : Internet Archive I like Sidney Greenstreet's "Nero Wolfe" for one. No watching required, Rex Stout was a great wordsmith.
I prefer movies with acting rather than the current crop of animated cartoons hence the movies I watch are B&W mainly from the 50's on back.....and have no need of anything other than what my TV provides....
BTW, thanks for that URL Harry..... I remember when I was small sitting in my grandfathers lap listening to the Lone Ranger on the weekly radio broadcast....
It is interesting to try out the various radio shows. "Sherlock Holmes" is pretty simple in the plots, I'm not sure how "Nero Wolfe" was able to cram much more into the time slot without feeling too rushed.
I'm thinking that I would like to make a retro-radio by gutting an old one and setting up a "tuner" to get a few of those shows, WGN, some old Red Socks baseball, Glenn Miller jazz, a few old news broadcasts, and some nice classical music. I might just tune in, dig out an old pipe, live in the past while reading my old National Geographics and novels, and never come back. Ah, the hidden glows of a pair of 6L6s, a few neon tuner lights, and the soft glow of a pipe, while sitting back in a wingback armchair with hassock, sipping, smoking, and listening.
Now you got me all nostalgic. What did we do to deserve stuff like "Survivor" and the other dross that passes as entertainment.
Now you got me all nostalgic. What did we do to deserve stuff like "Survivor" and the other dross that passes as entertainment.
We do have Turner Classic Movies, MGM and the History 2 channel that displays some intelligence... I also have Amazon Prime, they have decent movies. The BBC rarely puts on American shows.....
I enjoy the older movies with casts of thousands rather than CGI cartoons of thousands....
If Alfred Hitchcock were alive today he'd hop back in his grave ASAP......
I'll take the original Godzilla and Mothera movies over the Transformer movies....
Gunga Din over Battleship....
I do have to admit the best geography/wildlife show I've seen in decades was Wild Russia...
Why, Elvis watched 3 tvs at once when I saw his entertainment room in Graceland.
He was watching 3 tvs at once when you visited Graceland?! Wish I'd been there too!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Jesse69
How about you? How do you watch movies nowadays?
I watch a lot of TV shows/movies for my job (yep!) and have a bunch on DVD. I am still using old tube TVs as I can't justify spending almost a thousand bucks for a good, large (55-60") HDTV. It may be my Christmas present to myself this year, though.
I would be frustrated watching movies on my computer ... I like sitting in a dark room with popcorn.
I have my all time favorites on Dvd. Amazon used is a gold mine. And I'm working on my favorite series. There are a few movies I have to see once at a theater. Next Star Trek movie I will come IN UNIFORM. (wrong generation but who cares.)
I also use netflix. Since Hulu plus has yet to yeild enough to be worth it I will be cancelling that. Broadcast wise, my best friend is PBS. I was sitting there crying during the Christmas special for Call the Midwife. I love British series, especially period. I'd LOVE to have Science, Natgeo, and History 2 and Military, but now for what they cost, and then there's all the other mindless ones I'd never watch. I do love food shows, but it inspires me to get in the kitchen and do my own experiments.
Movies I watch less often but Encore is super cheap on a special and I like that they are older movies and they show a lot of classics.
What I want some channel to run is reruns of Buck Rogers in the 25th century, Planet of the Apes, the one where the moon was drifting, UFO and of course all the star treks and BSG (new) and Babalon 5. I'd be sooooo happy, even with commercials.
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) I experienced "Earthquake" in Sensurround. (The special effects couldn't make up for the Irwin Allen plot and staging.) I've set up and done various versions of 3D (even written a couple of published articles). 
