The Hobbit Will Fundamentally Change Your Movie-Going Experience: According to an article over at the Hollywood Reporter, the upcoming release of The Hobbit will be the catalyst that finally drives movie theaters to upgrade their projection hardware to 48 frames-per-second (fps) or better. The current theater playback technology supports 24fps, a standard that dates back to the 1920s; this, in-turn, was an upgrade from the 16fps that was common for earlier silent films. As video-game enthusiasts are keenly aware, a higher frame-rate reduces jitter and provides much smoother video playback, and that translates to a more immersive and realistic experience overall. (And for the trivia buffs among you, the move from 16fps to 24fps was necessitated by the advent of movie audio -- the original 16fps film speed moved too slowly over the magnetic heads to produce quality sound playback.)