My seat's been empty

One of the aspects of my life that I'm less proud of is this:
I have not seen a movie in theaters since July 2008. I was out to see "The Dark Knight" on opening weekend (not my brightest idea ever), and my wife was suffering from a then-undiagnosed case of double pneumonia (She did her best not to cough through the whole film, I tried my best to not be a butthead about dragging her out to the theater). The film itself was underwhelming despite great visuals, great sound effects, good directing and a truly Oscar-caliber performance from Heath Ledger.
But I don't think that's what scared me off from the cinema.
If anything, I abhor watching a film for the first time on DVD or any other format other than a gigantic screen in a darkened theater. It's hard to explain and yet quite cliché, but NOTHING compares to seeing a film at the theater.
But I can't bring myself to shell out the kind of money they charge to enter the theater and enjoy the show; by all means, in my heart I think it's worth it — but my head says otherwise.
I have yet to find a great theater that shows a good variety of new releases each week within 20 minutes of my house. The whole reason to go out is to have THE MOVIE EXPERIENCE, and some rinky-dink multiplex that was put together with the same amount of love and care as a last-minute term paper DOES NOT provide said experience.
That's truly the first and last issue that keeps me periodically picking up a year-old, used DVD to catch up on what the artists of the moving image have produced. It's truly a shame.
You can say my seat's been empty, but I contend that the seat in that great moviehouse doesn't exist yet -- at least not within a drive shorter than the lengthy procession of trailers and commercials before the feature.