I said:

How much does sound quality, invisible music, video quality, video resolution, colour, screen size, etc... all play into our emotional response to things? It probably doesn't affect our rational response, right? But it can totally change our emotional response.

My zinger of a comment after all of this was: 3D. There is a huge "rational" backlash against 3D. And I remember watching Avatar last year, being a one that was very excited about it being in 3D, and getting about 2/3s of the way into it and forgetting that it was in 3D. Not just that I had glasses on, but I had come so accustomed to the whole effect, that I didn't consciously even realize it was there. Which begs the question: If you can't even tell it's there, what does it matter if it's there or not?

But my argument is this: We don't like things based on rationale. We like things based on our emotional response. Our emotional response is fickle, and we don't always accurately predict or know what we'll respond to, or what exactly is drawing us in. There are lots of elements (Like music, like surround sound, like dbox chairs, like colour) that are very frequently not noticed by the logical part of the brain- they are not the focus of what we are watching... But they all sum up to the emotional response.

People say, "I liked Avatar, but I don't think the 3D had anything to do with it. It would have been just as good in 2D." But I don't think they can really know. They liked it because they had an emotional response to it. What exactly led to this response is unknowable.