Screening Room: what is it and what does it mean for cinema? | Den of Geek
http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/screeni ... for-cinema

The cost of using that service does not add up at all unless you're a weapons-grade geek (and you'll likely be at the cinema then), have a really large family, money to burn, or just live in London

This has been a genuinely great year for films already IMO, but that's definitely the exception that proves the rule. Most people got out of the habit of going to the cinema a long time ago, asking them to pay £35 a film on top of the setbox cost? What are the chances of that working? You'd need to be bloody certain the film was likely to be good.

£35 per film is silly money. If I go to AMC (now taken over by odeon), the parking is validated and three for the first three hours. If I go to Vue, the parking is free altogether. If the missus and I go, it's typically £10 each per film. We might have a meal before or after so don't always have snacks. Even if we did, the cost of preparing them at home is tiny compared to what they charge at the cinema.

Honestly, it needs to be £10 a go and at that point I'd be interested.

JJ, I am your father.

Ambitious 'Screening Room' Service Comes Under Fire — Latino-Review.com
http://www.latino-review.com/news/ambit ... under-fire

Yeah, word of mouth is more powerful than you might think, the amount of people I've packed off to see Deadpool...

It also works in reverse - I sure as fcuk wouldn't tell someone I'd invested in Screening Room

Playing Devil's advocate for a moment. What if you have a large family? My kid brother has six, yes six kids. This means that when they all go to the cinema there could be as many as eight people. Does £35 for 8 tickets sound over the odds?

It depends on how you see cinema. For me, it's an outing - a reason to get out of the house. Rarely will we just go cinema and come home. Hence, £35 would be too much for me. For large gatherings, it might be better value, but would everyone chip in some money?

As for six kids, sounds like they might have their hands full, but even if that were me, I still would refuse to pay when that money could get you DVDs/netflix etc

That's a fair point. Once you have the box there is presumably no way for the service to limit the number of people who are watching the film.
A cinema ticket, even with my Showcase Insider discount, is usually in excess of £8 so it doesn't take too many people to make it add up to £35 so there is a definite advantage for larger groups. It would be especially useful if it lets you do things like pause the film. The article also said they were proposing including 2 cinema tickets with each rental (presumably so you could watch the film with the kids then go to the cinema at a later date for the full experience without spending any more money).

Having said that, I'm not convinced this will have any real legs. It needs pretty much universal buy in from the studios to really be worth it and if you're going to watch a film on your telly anyway, you may as well wait until it's out on Netflix/Prime/Blu-ray or whatever.

I'm torn. £35 is around what I'd pay if me and the wife went to see the latest blockbuster after parking/bus charges are chucked on top so I don't think it's extortionate. But for me going to the cinema is not just about watching a film. It's getting out for a bit, maybe without the kids, and seeing the movie on the big screen with all the resolution and fancy audio that entails, etc etc. Watching the lastest film at home might be convenient and something I could do more regularly without the need for babysitters but it's not going to be the same experience.