I have now seen the movie Coraline twice in two weeks. First I watched it in 3-D. The DVD comes in both versions, 2-D and 3-D. I have been a pretty big fan of 3-D until I watched this movie both ways. All of the other 3-D Material that I have is only in 3-D.

One of the things I have learned from my Audio/Video systems design and communications training is how we gain information visually. We only have the ability to focus on the center of whatever we are looking at. Whatever we see in the middle of our view is what we see and interpret as we like. If you put your hand all the way in front of you and make a Hawaiian "Shaka" by extending your thumb and little finger that is about how wide your focus area is. If your TV fits in there, you don't have any wide screen experience, you can see it all in your primary field of view.

It is those things in our peripheral vision outside of this primary field that bypass our ability to interpret and go straight to the memory banks. Many people call these direct feed memory banks the subconscious.

When watching a movie on a small TV instead of the big screen in a theater, the experience is completely different. Everything on the small screen is in our primary field of view, and the music isn't separated enough to sneak by either. A really good digital theater or big screen home theater will have a viewing field greater that is more than 30 degrees wide. We even see a difference at 20 degrees yet most home media system are much less than 20 degrees wide at normal sitting distances.

The sound field in a movie theater is also 360, where a home tv set is 10 or 15 degrees allowing us to fully judge and interpret the music and sound track as well. We are deciding the emotional outcome of the movie on the small screen. The producer has much less ability to influence us and therefore our experience.

I found a similar effect with Coraline in 3-D. I was so intent on the 3-D effects and lack of natural color that I missed much of the detail and emotion of the movie. Watching it a second time in 2-D with normal color and full surround sound was a completely different experience. My wife and I sat down to watch 10 minutes or so to see if it was different. It was so different we were drawn in and re-watched the entire movie.

Watching Coraline on a true home imposters netflix season 3 system with a viewing angle greater than 20 degrees and THX class surround sound was a much better experience than the 3-D version with the 3D glasses. The viewing image was so deep that it felt like 3-D anyway. The real difference is the 3-D version with the glasses came out towards you, where the 2-D version felt like looking out a window into another world.

Overall, the movie Coraline is another great interpretation from Tim Burton and a great piece of demo material to show your friends if you have a well designed room.

If you get a chance to build a real big screen system in your home, do so. It will change everything.