Spending a lot of money on installing a home theater is a way of experiencing new films in the way the director intended them to be enjoyed, but not everybody likes new movies.

For the classicist, is there a danger that investing in new technology will take some of the spirit of the older movies they like?

Certainly there has been some debate over the remastering of older movies for broadcast on newer technology, and whether this strips away the authenticity of the show – but is this a justifiable complaint or the gripe of someone looking for something to complain about?

In many ways, it depends on the movie you are watching. Some directors of old, aware of the limitations of technology, very cleverly played on those very limitations to provide a more stripped-down film which could be all the more stark or realistic for its basic quality.

If we watch a remastering of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, will we be disappointed by how obvious it is that that “blood” is actually chocolate syrup? Does the increase of realism damage the suspension of disbelief?

It is hard to give a full answer one way or the other for whether the newer technology damages the experience of older movies, because once we have seen the film for the first time we are never seeing it as new, and knowing what has happened we will always look for more peripheral details.

In the end it is the job of the person remastering recordings for newer technology to retain the spirit of the film, as it is not possible to go back and reshoot the film to suit the newer developments.

Most of us will be young enough to have got much of our youthful enjoyment from watching movies, and old enough to have spent much of that time watching them on video.

This has brought about a special kind of nostalgia which yearns for the old movie nights which involved playing a few VHS cassettes of the latest releases and huddling around a TV screen about the size of, or little bigger than, a microwave oven. One of the most common complaints about newer technology is that it is soulless.

Is this fair?

One thing that cannot be denied is that some of the charm of watching a film on video was its “cosy” aspect.

As the viewers naturally had to be positioned closer together in order to see the screen, everyone got much the same experience.

Pausing the film pretty much caused the picture to jump so much you expected it to fly off the screen, and if you got the freeze frame at just the right point this could be particularly amusing.

Now with crystal clear pictures and perfect pausing, some of that is gone.

On the other hand, there were certain elements of films made for cinema that got lost when they were watched on video, due to the compromised sound and pictures.

Although the old-fashioned charm of watching movies on video may have been reduced by technology, the fact of the matter is that digital technology has allowed for some of the soul which was lost on video to be regained.

Setting up a viable movie complex in your own home is something that may not be within the reach of the average consumer – and something which, to be done properly, may well demand a level of technical knowledge that most people do not have – but it is increasingly an option in the present day.

How we go about this is up to us – and the range of options available means that it is something that can be done in a whole plethora of different ways.

In a way, it makes us the designers of our own home entertainment system.

The limitations of technology are not so all-encompassing as to have stopped us having “movie nights” in our homes where we invite friends around to watch a run of films on whatever size of TV is available to us.

What technology has enabled is a situation on which we can provide a viewing experience that means no-one present, however many people you invite, gets a compromised enjoyment of the film unless their seat is uncomfortable or the drinks are too warm.

In other words, the technology is fit for purpose, as long as you make the most of it.

Of course, your enjoyment of the system may depend on your ability to showcase it at its best.

This depends on a range of other considerations, such as the choice of material to be broadcast – films with a lot of fast action and a particularly broad range of images would tend to be best – and the size of the room in which you show it.

But the range of options is now greater than it has ever been.