John Sciacca Writes...

Judging from the interest in my first post on Prima Cinema (“I’ve Beheld the Future”, currently the most popular story to date on Theo Kalomirakis’ website, Theo’s Roundtable) I thought I would circle back to the topic.

First, if you want to read even more about Prima, check out these two posts on my experience with the system after having it installed in my home for two weeks.  (My review at Residential Systems, and my write-up at Digital Trends.) I think that I am the only reviewer to date to actually get to live with a system and have a real experience with it; there are plenty of people have written about the 30 minute demo they saw or about the press release they read, but this is a real, hands-on, complete review of the system in action.

One of the biggest, kneejerk reactions to Prima is the price. Some comments on my Prima review include:

“This will crash and burn. Even if I had billions of dollars I wouldn’t bother with this given the cost and restrictions are absurd.”

“Even if I could afford one, why would you pay $500 to watch one film? You could be a major putz and charge your friends $10 each for a seat and make back some money but how many first-run films are REALLY that worth watching at home? “ (Actually charging money is in total violation of the Prima membership agreement, so, probably don’t do that...)

“I don’t understand why $500 only grants a single use rental. That price sounds high even for the uber rich. For $500, you’d think a person could own a copy of the flick.”

“For someone who has more money than brains!”

But let’s step outside of our own financial constraints for a second and acknowledge the fact that there are many people out there – MANY – to whom the price of a Prima is negligible. When you are in the realm of private jet or yacht ownership, this is a drop in the bucket. People that wear $20,000 (and up) watches, have garages filled with 6-figure cars and order $500 bottles of wine by the case. Money is literally no object.

An article in the LA Times interviewed a couple that purchased a Prima, and this comment was incredibly telling about the mentality of the uber-rich regarding Prima’s price tag: “When the projector costs three times that, you don't pay attention to the Prima cost. We have boxes at the Hollywood Bowl, and we go to Disney Concert Hall to see Dudamel. Even if we watch 10 to 12 movies a year on Prima, it is still a fraction of our overall entertainment budget."

Click here to continue reading all of the reasons why Prima IS the future and all of the amazing things that it could do besides playing $500 first-run movies...