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This topic comprises 5 pages: 1 2 3 4 5
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Author
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Topic: Thx certification
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-09-2003 01:37 PM
I really can't fathom why anyone would want to build a theater to match or surpass THX specifications without paying for the certification.
Honestly, the very act of avoiding THX certfication cost and saying "our theater is like THX" would make me extremely suspicious and probably avoid the theater completely.
You cut corners by avoiding to pay for certification. And then that makes me think the corner cutting doesn't stop there. In every field of business there are legions of people who do stuff on the cheap and say "this is just as good" when it really is shit. I fight that all the time in the sign manufacturing business. There are so many different factors at play in what makes an auditorium great. And every one of those factors is a potential area where some bean counter will water things down with something cheaper. In the end, that doing-it-cheaper stuff accumulates into a very mediocre theater.
To build an audiotorium to satisfy THX specifications costs a serious amount of money. It can really be costly if you're taking an existing theater and bringing it up to the THX spec. It would be stupid to invest all that money without having a good way to market it, such as using the very recognizable THX brand name.
quote:
Would it maybe be worth the expense if you were building a theatre from the ground up to have the optimum THX equipment(thinking of the THX crossovers here) installed and get the certification as part of the start up costs and then not recert? (...if you have quality technitians doing all your p.m.s of course.)
Lots of theaters have been built with THX certified auditoriums and then let the certifications laspe. I don't understand it, considering the high cost of building the auditorium to meet the THX spec in the first place versus the nominal fee to keep it certified. The only things I can see outweighing the cost to maintain certification is if the theater's air conditioning system develops all kinds of problems and the company doesn't want to pay the extra money to get it fixed correctly. IMHO, THX is still worth the cost in terms of what you gain on brand identity to keep a built-for-THX theater certified.
Some companies like Carmike have allowed roughly half their THX screens to lose their certification to save some money. I don't know if they still do it for their newest theaters, but in the past they purchased the THX crossovers outright. Many auditoriums no longer certified still have the THX crossover (unlike a lot of other theaters that lose that crossover when losing certification). But it takes a lot more than just that crossover to keep a THX or no-longer-THX house in proper shape. And, as others have pointed out, there are actually better crossovers on the market.
To finish, I wanted to make a point on the marketing end. As Scott Jentsch has said, THX is one of very few tools out there for the public to distinguish the few good theaters from prevailing majority of mediocre screens. Another thing that has to happen is exhibitors need to really start competing against each other on the quality front.
The most common problem is 90% of movie customers will just drive to whatever theater is closest to their house, or most convenient to them (such as some disgusting little shoe box 'plex in a big mall). The newspaper ads and co-op ads do absolutely nothing to market against this. There are no "The Best Theater in Town" proclamations. About the only thing you see is some theater perhaps saying it has the biggest screen in the state, but after seeing it once you don't want to go back because the 35mm projection was too damned dim!
Most markets are dominated by circuits with more than one location in that market. They will rarely show favor to one location at the expense of others. And then there is the fear of marketing hypocrisy. It might be great to say one complex you run is the best theater in town. But if your other theaters are terrible dumps with low quality shows, then the "best theater" claims for the good location ring hollow. Overall for the head-to-head marketing against other theaters to work, one theater has to clean up its act first before doing it. Of course that's going to cost quite a bit of money and demand lots of minimum wage employees to give damn. Good luck on that.
With that said, THX is about the only thing the industry has as a "this is a good theater" stamp.
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Kevin Wale
Expert Film Handler
Posts: 167
From: Guymon, OK USA
Registered: Aug 2003
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posted 12-09-2003 04:25 PM
quote:
No way. If you want to build to or in excess of THX specs, great. You should do that anyway.
But if you want to claim to be just as good by directly referring to 'THX' you should really prove it and pay for the certification and re-certs.
10 years down the road when your theatre is still claiming to be 'just like THX' when in reality it has been neglected and now sucks, only helps to weaken an already weakening program.
Your Pepsi over Coke argument isn't even a good example. There's a big difference between "people like THX certified theatres over non-compliant theatres" and "we're just like THX".
Understood and agreed with. My Pepsi/Coke argument wasn't an argument to say that what we 'might' have would be better than THX. It was merely to demonstrate that often in advertising, aparently people don't have to pay licencing to use a brand name.
My question of how much recerts cost remains the big one. I think that is where the real financial crunch can come in. If you build a theatre to specs, generally you have an idea if you can support that in the first year's business. However, what happens when newness wears off? Is quality going to sustain you or do you need a marketting tool like the words THX to go with that quality?
The margins are obviously very tight in this business these days. I'm questioning all this not because I feel one should say they are like THX, or I feel that THX is or isn't necessary. I'm questioning all this because I think there is an answer that is best for both the exhibitor and the patron.
The problem right now is that people are uneducated. I really like the ideas of both running ads that talk about what makes your theatre great, and the trailer marathons. I think the ads help educate, and the marathons create a fun environment for people to be in. Rather than I wanted to see a movie and didn't want to wait, it becomes... that theatre is so much fun to go to because...
That's what I love. I loved as a kid going to the bigger theatres that ran those movie trivia slides and various other anecdotes. As an exhibitor I'd bring back cartoons and the national anthem reel. What the heck happened to curtain calls anyway?
Can all this be done in a 6, 8, 10 plex? I don't see why not. Hire good people, train them well, and as an owner promote your theatre and make sure the fun stuff is happening.
THX always represented that to me in the 80s. Part of my question is can it still?
$73,000 a year for an 8 plex may be worth it, but if you don't have it, you don't have it. Do you take out a loan every year? Can it be totally written off? What about that 4 million dollar loan you have from the start? Venture capital?
I'm just comming from the standpoint that I'm sick of always hearing, 'oh, we could never do that.' It's always someone else who can do it. I almost feel like we let the billion dollar a year companies build these fancy multis and basically put everything off in the conveyer belt way of doing things, while we know that quality is basically dying for the most part.
Then, people who are only interested in historical preservation(I say only because I'd love to see some old theatres brought back to life but not at the expense of charging people to see an inferior product in the name of doing something for the community) bring back old theatres and they don't have the passion for excellence(mosty because they don't really understand, not because they are idiots.)
Steve mentioned the Senator... That is what I'm talking about. Everytime I read about it something else new, fun, and exciting is going on. Is Tom the only guy left trying to recreate the fun and excitement of when he was a kid going to the movies? It shouldn't matter if it's a multi or a single historic.
I don't know, to me THX is worth it. I can't help it that there are other theatres who abuse their certification. My responsibility would be to do the best I can and strive for excellence. If THX is the best measuring stick, then I want to get it. As an owner, I would just have to figure out how to stay alive doing it. If THX will get them in the door and I can maintain true quality my heart tells me that I should be able to do well.
Or, should we all just be totally gearing up for large format's seemingly inevitable take over of the industry? Is that so much the future of cinema that now is litterally ground floor time such as when the theatres of old were so thriving?
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Bobby Henderson
"Ask me about Trajan."
Posts: 10973
From: Lawton, OK, USA
Registered: Apr 2001
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posted 12-09-2003 05:32 PM
quote:
I don't agree that THX certification is a stamp that says "This theatre is better than others."
It is true many non-THX theaters are among the best in their markets. When I lived in New York, I still preferred going to the Ziegfeld theater even after Loews and Cineplex Odeon built theaters with THX certified screens.
But what are the "good non-THX" theaters doing to distinguish themselves and shout out to customers "we put on a better quality show"? Nationwide, most circuits are doing absolutely nothing at all. There is nothing, zilch, nada, zero at all in the stack ads to show differences between the cinemas with film done right versus the mucky status quo crap. Again, THX is the only thing at all that is attempting to separate decent theaters from crappy theaters.
If there is a theater taking pride in putting on a good show, then its management really needs to grow a pair and say, "dammit, don't go to the crappy shoebox 'plex closest to your home; come to our place where you will enjoy the movie much more." No one is doing this. Sure, this could be called "mudslinging" or "dirty pool." So be it. Most other areas of business are more than happy to point out the disgraceful shortcomings of their competitors while touting their strengths. That's part of marketing.
But to stress a point I made earlier, most theaters are part of very large circuits where one good theater isn't going to be allowed to show itself to be better in advertising than some of its crappy sister theaters in the same market. Good theaters operated by large circuits won't have nearly the freedom to shame its competitors in agressive ads. An indie with some balls could do just that. For large circuits, THX may be their only positive marketing option.
quote:
I mean a well maintained theater will sound superior to a non-maintained theater regardless of the certification.
True. But what will the well maintained non-THX theater do to advertise it? If that theater's directory ads or its appearance in stack ads does nothing to tell me they're putting on a good show then they are doing absolutely nothing to get customers to bypass the shitbox theater closest to their house. The well maintained theater is going to go out of business if it depends on customers finding the place by accident. Since most moviegoers have little to no understanding of tech stuff, you're not going to get very far by good word of mouth either. Advertise that "good" part of the show with a recognizeable brand like THX or find some other way to do it.
Theaters need to make an effort to get customers to drive any extra distance. Most just visit the one closest to home even when the show quality is horrible. The only thing I see being presented as an alternative at all to bad theaters is home theater, unfortunately.
A theater operator has the right to equip his auditoriums in whatever way best suits him. But outside of THX, I really see nothing else out there at all being done to identify good quality theaters.
Rightfully, some shame needs to be hammered on all the Internet movie ticket sales .com sites and other places using movie showtimes to get people to visit their pages. They could do A LOT MORE to differentiate good theaters versus bad in the very same way that virtually every big city has restaurant ratings in newspapers and books. They're doing nothing about that right now because they don't feel obliged to do so.
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Evans A Criswell
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1579
From: Huntsville, AL, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 12-09-2003 08:35 PM
quote:
They could do A LOT MORE to differentiate good theaters versus bad in the very same way that virtually every big city has restaurant ratings in newspapers and books.
[Normally, I don't quote text from the post above, but for clarity I need to show which sentence I'm referring to since the post was long.]
This is exactly what I do on my site. Check out this page if you haven't before.
Theatres that do a great job on their film presentation get higher ratings and scores. I've mentioned this several times in the past few years here, but since new people come along, I like to mention it again every now and then.
The site, in the presentation quality reviews section, lists 386 showings attended at the current open theatres from the past few years, each of which has presentation quality notes and scores, and those scores are used to calculate presentation quality scores. THX certification does not figure into the ratings.
Click the theatre names in the rating table to see the complete lists of attended showings with notes, detailing any problems noticed and number of points deducted for each. Zero is a perfect score.
Has anyone encountered anyone else running a "theatre presentation quality review" system? It's similar to a restaurant review site, but it's for theatres. Note that the quality of the movie does not matter -- it's the image and sound that are rated.
I feel that a system like mine gives a better indication of theatre presentation quality than presence or absence of THX certification.
Thoughts? Criticisms? No system I come up with will make everyone happy, but I feel the system I've been using works and serves the purpose. I believe the site has caused improvements in presentation quality here during the past few years. All of the local theatre managers are aware of the site.
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Evans A Criswell
Phenomenal Film Handler
Posts: 1579
From: Huntsville, AL, USA
Registered: Mar 2000
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posted 12-10-2003 12:58 PM
If "Consumer Reports" reviewed the theatres, they'd run into some of the same issues I mention in my previous post. (Multiple reviewers with different tolerances and rating habits, much like different school teachers and their grading styles.) Heck, who knows -- they might get kickbacks for giving good ratings too. I receive no kickbacks or benefits from my ratings and receive no income from my site.
THX should have had reinspections once a year and should have checked the theatres based on the numeric quantities in their specifications, such as X footlamberts of screen illumination in the center and at corners, ability to resolve X lines of resolution at the center of the screen and X at the edges, no more than X decibels of sound from sources other then the sound system for that auditorium. Doing so would help take some of the subjectiveness out of things.
When I do reviews, I look at the image edges. Either the edges are sharp or there is aperture shadow. Either the image is centered or off-center. There is noticeable shutter ghosting during the movie or there isn't. The framing is proper or it isn't. The screen appears uniformly illuminated or it isn't. I must decide how many points to deduct for various problems, and I do so based on how severe the problem. It's true that this is a bit subjective, and one must have "mental tolerances" to decide when something warrants a deduction, but I've been doing this a long time and I feel I'm very consistent in the way I deduct.
THX should look for all these kinds of problems when reinspecting and the theatre companies should inspect their own theatres looking for the problems as well. Quality checking and control within a company is very important, and I don't see enough of it.
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