It sounds as though he has a pretty nice theater with not so bad a price.
The theater I regularly visit is pretty nice. The General Manager at that location actually cares about putting on a good show and has equipment in the booth that clearly outclasses just about anything someone could install in their home.
On top of that, the huge JPEG2000 digital movie files being played usually run at bandwidths in excess of 200 million bits per second. Blu-ray is a great format for home theater. But it is not superior to the specifications of 2K D-Cinema. The only thing better than that is the uncompressed original master.
I also have to put a shout out about the Moore Warren theater in Moore, OK. Now that is an incredible movie palace. 14 screens, all THX, all Dolby Digital Cinema, some screens equipped with Dolby 3D, 80' screens in the 2 biggest auditoriums (those houses also have premium balcony seating for customers 21 and older -there's a bar up there). The Moore Warren has over $1 million worth of neon and signage, over $1 million in imported marble. The list goes on and on. That's really how movie theaters should be.
Sad thing is there's too many crappy theaters and not enough of the good ones. Movie distributors and exhibitors really need to revamp that side of the business, especially with what Blu-ray provides in the home. Putting it basically, if movie theaters go out of business much of the movie industry will die with it. We'll only have lower budget TV shows after that.
IMHO, if anyone has a
good quality movie theater anywhere near them please visit that theater at least a couple times a year. At least lend support to theaters doing a good job.