Film buffs will tell you that watching a movie on the big screen is a much more immersive experience than watching it at home. But if Matthew Ball gets his way, that might not be true for much longer. Mr Ball—who used to be head of strategy at Amazon Studios, the tech firm's TV division—spends a lot of time thinking about the future of film and TV. He is especially interested in the possibilities offered by connected, computerised homes. Imagine an action film, he says, in which a smart television, equipped with the sorts of gaze-tracking cameras already used in smartphones, can wait until it has a viewer's full attention before showing a monster leaping out from behind a door. Or a horror film which commandeers a house's lights and makes them flicker at the appropriate moment, or plays eerie sounds—even whispering the viewer's name—from speakers in another room.
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