ABSTRACT
Home cinema is a peculiar market segment that stands alone from the mainstream of film, video and audio. Films, naturally, are made to be shown in the cinema, and it is always the producer’s aim to recoup the cost of making the film and go into profit from box office receipts alone. Video cassette hire or sell-through and TV broadcast fees are seen as a bonus (sometimes a career-saving bonus). TV programmes are, equally naturally, aimed at a domestic audience who would typically have a large mono audio TV in the living room and a small portable with a correspondingly small speaker elsewhere in the house. So no-one, or virtually no-one, is actually producing material directly for the home cinema market. The home cinema enthusiast will either view laserdiscs or VHS cassettes of feature films, or wait for the still very occasional TV programme made with a Dolby Surround sound track.
