Phones in the Theater

[mhkohne]

Oh, it gets more fun when the phone goes off during the voir dire phase of jury selection. I swear the judge was going to cite him for contempt. Or take the phone and use it for the part of the bench the gavel strikes. Instead, the judge decided to use it as a "learning" moment and explain that the next time a cell phone goes off during HIS court proceedings, he was going to cite contempt of court! Oh, and he was glaring at the lawyers too.

There's at least one judge out there who fines anyone whose phone goes off in court. And he even fined himself when he screwed up one day and his own phone went off.

[Jay 2K Winger]

My philosophy has always been - if you're in a situation where there could be an immediate medical emergency - a doctor or maybe you have a relative in ICU, don't go to the movies.

And thus the doctors just miss out on movies, full stop?

Y'know what, let's stop this argument now. It's better suited for Fratching probably.

[wolfie]

With the tendency toward multi-plexes nowadays, I can imagine a theater doing SOME but not all of their screens as Faraday cages. If they were to post signs (yep, I know nobody reads them) saying that as a courtesy to guests, so that they won't be interrupted by other guests' cell phones, screens 1, 3 and 5 have been set up so there is no signal, that would give people who MUST be reachable fair warning. Put the new release movies on those screens, and after the first week or two move them to the other screens (Faraday cages would be expensive to rig, so doing all the screens would be prohibitive). That way, it wouldn't be "Doctors can't go see movies", it would be "Doctors can't go see movies in the first 2 weeks" (and if a movie doesn't last more than 2 weeks, you're better off renting the DVD, because it's probably a flop).

Another (but more expensive - so likely only for "premium" theaters) solution would be a concierge service. You check in your cellphone, and pair it to a Bluetooth device at the check-in (Bluetooth device detects the ring, and signals the theater's paging system). They issue you a vibrate-only pager whose transmitting antenna is inside the Faraday cage (and so is not blocked). Your cellphone rings, the pager vibrates, you go to the check-in to retrieve the message on your phone. If it's the important call you were expecting, you return the pager, collect your phone, and leave. If not, you've missed a few minutes of the movie.

[greek_jester]

There's at least one judge out there who fines anyone whose phone goes off in court. And he even fined himself when he screwed up one day and his own phone went off.

This judge gets a hearty

Nice to see someone who's willing to avoid the old saying "do as a say, not as I do".