Mill Valley Film Festival: The THX guide for a better viewing experience at home

The Mill Valley Film Festival is back for its 44th year, and THX is the official streaming partner for this year’s festival because our fans deserve the best possible cinematic experience wherever and however they’re watching their favorite content. 

Luckily, outstanding movie-watching experiences from mobile devices are within your grasp with THX Onyx™, thanks to THX Onyx’s super clear sound reproduction and oodles of power it provides headphones. 

Thanks to the THX AAA™ technology, movies get bigger and bolder sound, so superhero fights and whispered dialogue sound crisp, clear, and impactful. Coupled with the mobile-first design, THX Onyx can help movie lovers get a superior watching experience wherever and whenever they choose to watch. 

Those of you looking to improve your TV experience for the Mill Valley film festival, don’t worry. We’ve compiled a list of easy tips and tricks that’ll help up-level your living room. 

Room Setup

Step one, drop the lights and close the curtains to prevent direct glare from appearing on your TV screen, especially if you have a flat panel display. This lowers the ambient light in the room so it won’t distract or detract from the picture on the screen. 

Next, make sure you’re sitting at the correct distance from the screen. For example, if you have a massive 85″ TCL TV, you don’t want to sit three feet from it, nor should you watch your laptop from across the room. Check out the THX Room Size Guide to find the correct distance for your setup. 

Also, if you have more people watching than can comfortably fit onto one couch, don’t seat the overflow/late arrivals perpendicular to the screen (think semi-circle). Instead, set up two parallel rows. This way, everyone has a direct view of the screen and the black levels and color saturation are maintained.  

Internet connection and TV settings

If possible, we recommend running an ethernet cable to your TV or streaming dongle (Roku, Apple TV, Amazon Fire Stick). This eliminates the variable of large files, spotty WiFi signals, and should help stop any unwanted buffering. 

For those watching on TVs, find your remote and head to the settings menu because there are two things we need to adjust. First, if your TV has a cinema or film mode, turn it on – especially if it has THX® Certified Cinema Mode. 

THX Certified Cinema Mode will give you a few things over the standard picture setting. First, it’ll adjust all the color and brightness settings to their studio levels. This ensures your movies have the correct highlights and shadows. THX Certified Cinema Mode also corrects the color gamut, so what you see on the screen is accurate to what the filmmaker intended.

Next, make sure an option typically known as “motion smoothing” or “video interpolation” is off. This mode is best suited for sporting events and tends to make movies look like made-for-TV soap operas – something you don’t want for the Mill Valley Film Festival lineup.

Movie watching on smaller screens

Say you’re watching movies on your laptop while lounging on the couch or in bed, there are still some easy steps you can take to get the most out of that more intimate, small-screen experience. 

Begin by lowering the lights, like you would for watching on a TV. Next, grab your favorite headphones. Laptop, tablet, and smartphone speakers are small and can be in less-than-optimal locations. Getting a pair of headphones eliminates those issues and will help isolate your ears from outside noise. Couple those headphones with our THX Onyx DAC/Amp and its stellar sound reproduction, and you’re good to go. And just a quick note for our iPhone users, make sure you purchase an Apple slim adapter beforehand when pairing with the THX Onyx.

The only thing left to do is grab some popcorn and enjoy the show.

Remember the popcorn or your favorite snack, sit back, and enjoy the Mill Valley Film Festival!

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