Prima Cinema Brings Big Screen Movies To Your Living Room, But…

Prima Cinema has an answer for any of you, who have complained about not being able to watch first-run movies in your living room while they’re still playing in theaters.

The system comes equipped with a rack-mountable cinema player and the Prima Biometric Reader, which, PC Magazine notes, is a security function that enables only the owner of the system to play movies streamed from the Internet to the device.

One of the only caveats to ownership: it only offers films from Universal, and will cost you a whopping $35,000, not including the $500 per title for each new release.

Also, the cinema player can house only 50 movies at a time (or around $17,500 worth of Universal films). Up this week: Jurassic Park 3D.

Previous releases have included Identity Thief, Admission, and Les Miserables.

While the move is potentially groundbreaking for the home entertainment market — how many times have you encountered obnoxious movie patrons and thought, “I’m not coming back; if only I could stream from the house”? — it’s not a particularly aggressive maneuver.

Clearly, the five-figure initial price tag will keep middle class and lower income film lovers from biting, and the $500-per-title ongoing expense will further exclude, but it’s doubtful that’s the market anyway.

The Prima Cinema system would appear to be a great asset for businesses looking to capitalize, but not so fast if that’s what you’ve got in mind, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

THR noted representatives would inspect any venue belonging to an owner interested in purchasing to ensure no more than 25 seats are available.

Such a practice would effectively turn this into a loss-leader for small venues looking to dabble into Prima Cinema as an event revenue generator.

And considering technology pricing always starts higher and trends cheaper with time, a few questions come to mind:

1. Who will pay a fortune for a technology that’s likely to be significantly reduced in five years?

2. How long before the tech becomes palatable to the common consumer?

3. When was the last time anyone watched a movie in theaters and thought, “Yeah, I’d pay $500 to see that”?

Would you cough up the asking price for a Prima Cinema player, and how do you expect theatrical releases streamed to the home entertainment market to develop in the next five years?

For the curious, here’s a demonstration video of the system:

[Image via Prima Cinema website]