It's amazing how different an experience it is, isn't it? I'm always struck by how different it feels to be watching a vid in a room full of other vid fans -- that hushed silence before the vid starts, the air of anticipation, the moments of laughter or gasping, the applause afterwards.
And then I bring the discs home and I want to show vids to my friends, and sometimes they're a hit in my living room and other times they aren't as exciting, maybe because the people in my living room don't know the show(s) in question, or because...I don't know why. But this is why people used to talk about a distinction between a "con vid" and a "living room vid" -- the assumption was that a living room vid was one you could get on a VHS tape and could watch repeatedly, so it could be subtler, whereas a con vid was something you would only be able to see once and you'd be watching it in a room full of other excited fans.
I'm not so sure the distinction exactly holds anymore -- now we typically come home from cons with dvds, which changes things -- but it's definitely still true (for me) that vids play differently at a con vs. in my living room. :-)
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And then I bring the discs home and I want to show vids to my friends, and sometimes they're a hit in my living room and other times they aren't as exciting, maybe because the people in my living room don't know the show(s) in question, or because...I don't know why. But this is why people used to talk about a distinction between a "con vid" and a "living room vid" -- the assumption was that a living room vid was one you could get on a VHS tape and could watch repeatedly, so it could be subtler, whereas a con vid was something you would only be able to see once and you'd be watching it in a room full of other excited fans.
I'm not so sure the distinction exactly holds anymore -- now we typically come home from cons with dvds, which changes things -- but it's definitely still true (for me) that vids play differently at a con vs. in my living room. :-)