Why do trailers say only in theaters

The feature film does not start at the published showtime. There are approximately 20 minutes of preshow material, including trailers, between the published showtime and the start of the feature film. The advertised showtime reflects the time that trailers, policy announcements and occasional public service announcements will begin. We consider movie trailers to be an integral part of the overall show.

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If you buy something from a Vox link, Vox Media may earn a commission. See our ethics statement. For a year, American movie theaters have largely remained closed. The number of new releases was reduced as studios bumped their biggest titles into the future. Drive-in theaters made a comeback, to be sure, but only recently have regular movie theaters started to reopen across the country, at reduced capacity for now.

Or your tablet. Or your phone. The pandemic undeniably changed certain aspects of our at-home movie viewing habits — some for the better, and in ways that are poised to last a while. Major studios and theater chains have agreed to permanently reduce the amount of time between when a movie hits theaters and when it reaches streaming platforms.

Some distributors may also decide to stick to day-and-date releases, where a movie arrives in theaters and on streaming at the same time. It makes sense to give audiences options. It sucks. But the impending death of the movie theater has been attributed to streaming services almost as long as streaming services have existed, despite evidence that people who stream more also go to cinemas more.

It was a replacement for everything. When the first movie theaters opened in , the reason to visit was simple: to watch a movie. If you wanted to see a film, you had to go to the place where the film was playing. Eventually, technological advances brought new options for at-home entertainment. And as they changed and evolved, so too did the reasons to venture out. If you loved Titanic when it came out in and wanted to see it again before its arrival on home video — on not one but two VHS tapes, nine months after its theatrical premiere — you had to go to the theater.

Even as DVDs and then Blu-rays became commonplace, and streaming services arrived in the late aughts, the reasons for going to a movie theater remained about the same.

It was something to do. Going to the movies was fun and relatively cheap. A movie theater was a good place to go on a date or with someone you wanted to date. There were blockbuster releases and goofy comedies and horror movies to see. But with the introduction of sound to movies more than eighty years ago, people with a hearing loss were faced with an access disparity that, to a large but, thankfully, diminishing extent, still exists today. People with vision loss encounter their own obstacles when wanting to see a movie.

Captions not only display words to indicate spoken dialogue or narration, but also include sounds, sound effects, speaker identification, music, and other auditory information not conveyed in speech. Description adds audio information that is essential in understanding characters, scenes and scene changes, passages of time, style, objects, and other aesthetics.

It is rare for first-run movies shown in theaters to be instantly accessible to people who are deaf, hard of hearing, blind, or visually impaired, however. Not all movies are made accessible in the same way, and terminology to describe the types of captioning varies. Most people use the terms open captioning OC and closed captioning CC. In movie theaters, open captions consist of those requiring no manipulation or interaction by the viewing audience; the captions are viewable on the screen with no special equipment or adjustment required by the audience.

Closed captions in theaters consists of captions that can only be seen by a person with the necessary equipment, typically provided by the theater at no charge. Described video will be variously termed as audio description AD , video description VD , and description D. Many theaters have description available as part of the digital file used to show a movie. To use audio description at the movies, an individual wears a headset and listens to an audio description track that is synchronized with the movie.

The ADA Standards for Accessible Design states: A public accommodation shall take those steps that may be necessary to ensure that no individual with a disability is excluded, denied services, segregated, or otherwise treated differently than other individuals because of the absence of auxiliary aids and services, unless the public accommodation can demonstrate that taking those steps would fundamentally alter the nature of the goods, services, facilities, privileges, advantages, or accommodation being offered or would result in an undue burden, significant difficulty, or expense.

The updated ADA regulation now specifies that open or closed captioning are included in the term "auxiliary aids and services. Not providing closed captions and audio description is a violation of the ADA. Movie theaters must:. Contact your local theater to ensure the movie you want to see will be accessible.

This post was originally authored by Teresa Rogers in