Vue denies cinema phone ban plan
Contradictory claims
Vue Cinemas is distancing itself from claims that it may shortly ban mobile phones from its auditoria.
A company representative last week told blogger Dom Hodgson that Vue was pondering such a ban, the better to reduce piracy. It already bans other kit capable of recording sound and/or video.
"I do fully recognise your comments regarding the recording capability of mobile phones and the apparent disparity in our current policy," an unnamed spokesperson told Dom at the time.
"Please be advised that this matter is currently under review... I expect the policy to change in early October."
This week, however, Vue contacted Reg Hardware to say that this will not happen.
"Vue Entertainment has no plans to nor has ever considered banning mobile phones from our cinemas," it said.
"As technology continues to evolve, we continually review our policy on sound and recording equipment in order to protect the film business from the threat of film piracy."
Such a ban would, of course, but almost entirely unenforceable and would do very little to halt piracy. We'd say that banning laptops is just as pointless - is anyone really going to try and grab Toy Story 3 on their notebook's webcam?
How about showing some sense on that ban, Vue? ®
COMMENTS
Emergencies?
What happened in emergencies in the days before you had a mobile?
You're probably not as important as you think you are. Switch it off for a couple of hours.
A word of support from a cinema employee
I'm in total agreement with the sorry state of cinemas these days. As a projectionist, there is rarely a time when I glance through the porthole from my lofty eyrie and not see the glow of a mobile phone screen glaring up at me. I personally would favour the use of a phone signal blanking generator. Such things are available but, frankly, never likely to be used by any cinema in the country. Unless all cinema chains adopted them at once, they'd be too concerned with loss of revenue from cinema-goers going elsewhere to use them. Likewise, how long do you think it would be before someone sued a cinema because "They missed an emergency call which led to increased stress and trauma because Auntie Doris had to be rushed into hospital after a fall."?
On mobile phones in general....how did we become such slaves to the machine? I carry a mobile phone for emergency use only....my emergency use....in case my car breaks down or something. I don't carry it so that every herbert in creation can phone me at any time of the day or night, no matter where I am. In that, sadly, I seem to be in a minority. And is it just me that finds it rude that, on receiving a call/text/whatever, the person I was interacting with immediately ignores me as if I've suddenly ceased to exist in order to slavishly attend their electronic master's whim?
I won't go into the people who seem to find it necessary to shout into their phone like it was some kind of wind-up handset from the 30's, nor will I moan about the sometimes entirely inappropriate ring-tones that people use - I'm sure the small kids in the foyer don't mind some rapper effing and blinding suddenly from the back-pocket of some brain-dead imbecile.
Yeah....I don't like mobile phones generally!
Please do
Please ban mobiles. It'll stop me sitting and seething when someone three rows in front pulls their phone out to reply to texts every five minutes through the film. Wasn't so bad with the old green-backlit phones but the big screened colour smartphones can't help but distract... I can't see that anyone *needs* to use their phone while watching a film.
Another title.
"... you're not watching the movie at all. Unless the bloke raises his phone way above his eye level, I can't really be annoyed by that."
Maybe it's just my local cinema. But with the positioning of the seats - yes, if anyone in my field of view gets their phone out, there's a sudden glare of several square inches of glow waving about while they check facebook, and that does catch my eye, no matter how hard I'm trying to watch.
"Emergency situations will usually mean that I have to answer NOW NOW NOW"
If I'm in a position where I'm likely to receive urgent calls - paid to be on call that night, wife about to go into labour, I probably wouldn't go to the cinema. Anything else can probably wait 90 minutes. I don't think I'm the exception here? Perhaps I'm fortunate in that while I'm technically on call 24/7, anything outside core hours is best-effort, leave a message and I'll get back to you.
Of course, I've not started on the row of foreign kids who talked most of the way through Avatar, including one who answered her phone during the opening titles...
The title is required, and must contain letters and/or digits.
Exactly. I'm not handing my expensive phone over to some cinema employee who could just steal it.
If people using their phones is such a problem, how about pausing the film every time someone starts using one and the usher then asks them to leave in front of the whole audience?
