Home video?

Question

maybe a stupid question, but....why were films never released as film reels for home projection, as I believe, even downgrading the 35-mm film to 8mm for home projectors, would still give much higher queality than vhs, and possibly HD, and all much sooner released than both...

Answer 1

yes

Answer 2

BECAUSE THEY ARE NOT STUPID

Answer 3

The market is so tiny for this that it is not worth the effort for the studios to even consider it. HD DVD or Blu Ray are your best best. You can buy projectors that can plug into a computer or DVD device now, to be honest things have moved on since reels.

Answer 4

There used to be some short films released on 8MM way back about 35-40 years ago, when there was no home video alternatives.

The issue is that to make a projector that could run a full movie, it'd have cost thousands of $$$ of 1965 dollars, and the movies would also have been prohibitively expensive. Some rich folks had projection rooms in their mansions, and the necessary equipment, usually some that would otherwise have been used in a movie theater.

One of the big selling points of the first VCRs, was that, even at a price of around $1,000 in 1976 dollars, they were cheaper than any film based playback system could be, and the tapes were even more cheaper than film based movies could ever have been.

Modern home theater is based on digital formats and their much greater storage capability (And, ease of handling), so film use in such an area would have done AbZero in support of the development of digital video technologies. Without CDs, we don't get DVDs.