Ok fair point. I have a home theatre, yes it's better than most cinemas I've been to, but I still love the cinema. I'm also still am going to say my point is probably more accurate especially going by ign comments. Plus, gamers pirate, like a lot. It doesnt suprise me that gamers have no problem with this. 

I'd also argue movie enthusiasts would have a higher end set up than most gamers anyway. 

I agree BIG TIME on the bold part.

(But I still enjoy the experience a lot when that doesn't happen.)

I'm really worried about the effect the pandemic is having on cinemas and theaters. The county to the north of me, which has a city plus county population of 120,000, just had it's 14 room cineplex permanently closed thanks to the pandemic, now the only movie theater serving the whole county is an old 2 room theater in the old downtown district. My county has been better off so far, we have a 10 room cineplex, a 3 room theater downtown built in the 1920's, and a 6 room theater in the mall, but they just announced that the entire mall is closing and being torn down to build a truck stop in it's place, so we just lost that 6 room theater. Now we have just 15 rooms to serve 2 counties with a population over 100,000 each, and it's definitely possible that we will lose the 10 room cineplex in my county as well soon, they're not doing so hot business wise, mainly only getting to air old movies. 

Now these movie studios are all embracing digital releases for movies, which basically means that even when the pandemic ends, theaters and cinemas will not be able to recover to the way things were. I'm really going to miss the theater going experience, there is nothing like watching a huge new movie on a massive screen with good surround sound speakers while eating a bucket of movie theater butter popcorn (even if that experience is massively overpriced). Most of us normies can't afford to build a nice home theater that can even come close to replicating that experience. 

On the plus side though, these digital releases are much cheaper for a family to see, most have been either $20 or $30 so far, which is less than the price of 2 or 3 movie tickets at a cineplex. For a family like my brother's, who has 6 kids and his wife, it could cost over $100 to see a new movie in theater, now he can watch it for $20 or $30 plus the cost of snacks at a grocery store. It's a huge price increase if you live alone though, from $12 a ticket up to $20 or $30.

I'm not entirely against the idea of movies being available for home viewing immediately, since there are many people who like movies but not theaters. More importantly, I really hate that period when all the theaters have dropped a specific movie, but you still have to wait months before the home release, so this remedies that too.

Still... if this becomes the norm, it's going to have a major impact on the cinema business. Maybe enough to kill it off. 2020 has given us a lot of shit, but if it really is the death of the cinema, that's by far the worst thing to come out of this year. Hopefully it doesn't happen, but it's getting harder and harder to feel hopeful about it.

i haven't been to cinemas lately even pre-Covid, but that's because most of the movies were nowhere near interesting for me to shelve the price of entry, still at first glance getting these movies on same day release as theaters is neat .... as long as they don't try Disney bullshit tactics of paying an additional 30$ fee just to simply rent a digital form of the movie.

BTW, maybe I guess some of you got incredible home setups but honestly, I've yet to experience better home setups than our movie theaters. Goes to say, that I see this event with a cautious look.

I'm a movie fan, but there is a pandemic of a deadly airborne disease happening right now so excuse me if I'm not enthusiastic about sharing an indoor space with dozens of strangers, any one of whom could get me killed.

... Do I even get HBO Max here in the UK? o.O Love the idea either way though, lol

If this proves successful, I wonder how many subscription services will be required to have full access to the roster of new releases. It's already $24/month between Disney+ and HBO Max, and Disney has already shown willingness to dig deeper into your wallet than movie theatres. Considering that streaming cannot match the performance of modern film projectors, this could very easily become a situation where you're paying a premium for an inferior product.

It's nice to have the option during a plague, but since this is the industry's idea of damage control and not about taking advantage of modern technology for the benefit of the audience, I suspect that they're going to EA this up the moment they realize they can get away with it.