It all comes down to big sound and big pictures.
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Browsing the showtimes for a movie these days can often mean choosing a format in which to see it. As always, the standard theater experience is on the table, offering a much larger screen and better sound than most people have at home, in addition to the company of popcorn-munching strangers. But at some theaters, you’ll also see Dolby Cinema or Imax showings, two premium formats which some moviegoers can find difficult to differentiate between.
The differences between Imax and Dolby Cinema boil down to intention. Whereas Imax focuses on scale, with massive screens and specialized film cameras or digital workflows used during the filmmaking process, Dolby Cinema is about precision, with intricate, spatial sound systems, object-based audio imaging, and a proprietary version of high dynamic range (HDR) visuals. Ultimately, you should choose Imax if you want to feel swallowed whole by the movie, and Dolby Cinema if you want an incredibly precise and immersive sound experience along with an image that pops off the screen.
Both formats have their place, and a filmmaker can use either format. Some, including Oppenheimer and The Odyssey director Christopher Nolan and Sinners director Ryan Coogler, have championed Imax for those projects as a way of making their stories feel larger than life. Others, including Frankenstein director Guillermo del Toro and Avatar: Fire and Ash auteur James Cameron, have embraced Dolby Cinema. Even so, many movies are released in both formats, and it’s up to moviegoers to determine which is best for any given film. So, here’s what you need to know before you snap up those tickets.
IMAX is all about epic scale for filmmakers and spectacle for viewers
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If you’ve ever been inside an Imax auditorium before, you know it’s a format that’s all about proportion. Though originally used for nature documentaries (trust me, you haven’t seen a wildlife documentary until you’ve seen it in Imax), it was eventually adopted by blockbuster filmmakers. What makes it unique is its marriage between camera and theater.
As Imax senior vice president Bruce Markoe explained to Variety, dedicated Imax footage is shot on 1.43:1, 15 perf, 65mm film with a specialized camera. The latest Imax camera is called the Keighley. That camera was recently spotted on-set for Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Movies for Imax can also be made using a digital workflow optimized for the format and edited in an exclusive 1.90:1 aspect ratio. If some footage is shot on Imax film, the movie can be labeled as “shot with Imax,” whereas filmmakers who are using an Imax-first digital workflow can claim their movie was “filmed for Imax.” Every movie made with Imax production then goes through a process the company calls digital image remastering (DMR) to make footage look its best on an Imax screen. Essentially, if you see a film advertised with one of those labels, you can safely assume the best viewing experience will be in an Imax theater.
Imax theaters facilitate a dedicated viewing experience for either type of Imax production, including a particular room geometry, speaker placement and, of course, that enormous screen. An Imax screen is curved and stands floor-to-ceiling, which is why Imax movies can feel like they’re swallowing you whole. While once projected using a breakthrough film projector, newer Imax theaters use a laser projector. Imax auditoriums are built from the ground up by Imax, with only 1,829 screens worldwide by the end of 2025, although Markoe told Variety there is a backlog of orders for more.
Dolby Vision is about precision audio and vivid pictures
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Dolby has been a staple of the filmmaking landscape for decades, and its name is on the Dolby Theater where the Academy Awards are held annually. The company, full name Dolby Laboratories, focuses primarily on sound technology. If you’ve ever shopped around for home theater sound systems, you’ve probably heard of Dolby Atmos, and that’s a bit more than half of what makes Dolby Cinema a particularly immersive experience. Dolby Cinema combines Atmos with the company’s Dolby Vision projection specification, which uses a Dolby Vision laser projector with traditional CinemaScope or Flat aspect ratios.
Dolby Atmos is a proprietary range of technologies that mixes classic, channel-based audio mixing with specialized, object-based mixing. Each sound in the mix is tracked as its own object in a virtual, 3D space. The format can currently accommodate a 9.1 channel audio bed alongside up to 118 spatial objects. In order to accommodate the spatial audio mix, a Dolby Cinema theater must be purpose-built for the format, with up to 64 individual speakers installed at the front, sides, back, and rear of an auditorium, as well as overhead. The result is that every explosion feels like it’s happening to you. While watching Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, I actively attempted to dodge a Dolby-mixed arrow that sounded like it was whistling past my head, and I fear I may never feel so alive again.
As for the other piece of the Dolby Cinema puzzle, Dolby Vision is simply the brand name for the company’s take on HDR. Like any other version of that technology, Dolby Vision deepens contrast levels to produce inky blacks and brighter, richer colors. But while HDR looks nice on your TV at home, it looks even better in a theater. Because the projectors commonly found in theaters cannot produce deep black hues, instead looking somewhat grey, Dolby Vision uses a specialized laser projector and screen to overcome this limitation and deliver up to 1,000,000:1 contrast ratios.
