Luxury Home Movie Theaters Are All the Rage

Luxury homeowners are consructing elaborate movie theaters within their homes more and more these days.

Owning a luxury home means a lot more than just having an enormous mansion. Sure that is a good start, but luxury homes go so much further; they are displays of shear elegance with amenities only afforded by the world’s wealthiest. Luxury homes often have in-home spas, marble flooring, large plasma HD televisions throughout, basketball court, bowling alley, designer kitchens, and pools that more closely resemble a lagoon from a high-class resort. Luxury homes even have in-home theater rooms.

We’re not just talking about oversized custom entertainment centers. We are talking about an entire room designed to emulate a real movie theater. Comfort with custom seating, ambient lighting, beautiful large screen high definition televisions plus the option of having the room designed in specific time periods, stles or themes. Everything from western themes to luxurious art deco to creative film themes are available.

There are companies that offer assistance in designing the perfect home theater room according to homeowners’ taste and specifcations. They can help either before the house is built or even in established homes.

Home theaters are elegant, however, costly. They are the perfect solution for those people who enjoy more time at home instead of always going out to a movie theater. They are able to avoid the crowded and loud theaters, the sticky and gummy floors, the restless children and people’s heads blocking the view. A beautiful and private home theater can provide that perfect atmosphere for just you and your family and friends.

The architectural and interior choices can be limitless. Private theaters can be designed with an elaborate style which could include a ceiling that looks like a starty sky as you are gazing up at your screen. Yes anything is possbile. Even custom made popcorn poppers to really set the scene of an authentic theater could be a great added detail.

Lighting is also a key element to this type of room. Soft and indirect lighting on dimmer switches controlled from a remote at your special seat is usually what the experts recommend.

Home theater rooms also require one other major feature and that is a high-quality surround sound system especially if the real feel a movie theater is to be achieved. Of course you would want to feel the thunder, storms and any other scenery effects you may be watching on the screen, wouldn’t you? Companies are definitely abrest of all the latest technolgy to make sure that sype of room is well equipped and can also help achieve each and every detail of your movie room.

Whatever the style, a home theater is definitely an enjoyable and luxurious aspect of a luxury home and provides any home owner the privacy and ability to enjoy watching favorite movies from a softly lit room in a cushy soft lounge seating. Homes with these features generally are the talk of all who enter and usually become a great source of hospitality and entertainment for family and friends. So if you choose to reward yourself with one of these extra rooms, get ready, dim the light and start the show.

Alexis Hunter is the Marketing Director for The Morel Group which specializes in Fine Rancho Cucamonga Homes. The Morel Team Marketing Experts spare no expense in showcasing your property and bringing focus to the uniqueness and beauty of your home.

By rob tendick
Published: 1/13/2007
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Movies, Movies, Movies In Your Own Home Movie Theater

Movies, Movies, Movies In Your Own Home Movie Theater

We all love to go to the movie theater to relax after a long day of work. Even if you need to tide traffics jams to go to the movie theater, you are willing to endure this to be able to watch a movie. The sight and sound of a movie theater is what makes us go back there every so often. We easily get lost in the movie scene because of the bigger than life pictures and surround sound that takes you there beside the characters in the movie. This may prove to be costly in the end but we continue to do this because we love to go to movie theaters and see movies. If you can bring home a movie theater, it will be good and I am sure you will love the idea. However, before you say no, think again. Going to the movie theaters every single day is definitely costly in the long run. Additionally, if you know the basic components of a home movie theater, you may not think twice and will definitely leave right now to acquire your own home movie theater.

A complete setup of a movie theater in a big room is definitely only accessible to the rich and the famous. However, if you have meager budget, you can have the home movie theater for yourself knowing the basic components and setting up the home movie theater in a smaller room. You may convert you den to a home theater room. You only need the three basic components and you may already enjoy watching movies with no limit.

If you have a television set, which I know you do, that is about 27 inches, you run away spending for the first major component of your home movie theater. The second major component, which I think you have, is the DVD player. If your DVD Player has progressive scan that is wonderful, however, even without progressive scan, your DVD player may work as the second component for your home movie theater. The final piece of the puzzle, which I want you to spend on, is the home theater speakers. You need three high-quality home theater speakers for your home movie theater. You need to place one on the right side, one on the left side and one on the rear center of the room. These are the three basic components of your home movie theater. You may now start enjoying unlimited movie and enjoy watching movies with your whole family. I am sure you will agree with me that this is the best part of owning your own home movie theater.

The set up for your home movie theater with the three basic components is the best perfect setup for small rooms. However, if you have a bigger room for your home movie theater, I am sure you have a bigger budget for your home theater. Then you may want to consider the recommendation of home theater experts, you may add more speakers up to six home theater speakers and may need to compliment it with subwoofer to maintain the surround sound effect for your home movie theater. If you want a bigger picture, you may want to consider buying a home theater projector. You may also acquire home theater seating and television cabinet if you want to compliment the home theater design to make up a complete package for your home entertainment. All these additions to the basic components may be necessary if you have a bigger room. If the room is smaller, then you may only need the three basic components for your home movie theater.

Having to be able to bring home the sight and sound you run after in movie theaters may be very efficient and less costly. Aside form the fact that you enjoy life with your family beside you watching movies after movies in your very own home movie theater.

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What Is Home Theater?

What Is Home Theater?

Home theater is the term used to describe the recent evolution of audio and video systems that offer exceptional quality and superior performance – in essence, it is like having a movie theater in your own living room.

The recreation obtained by the combination of audio and visual components creates the experience of a professional movie theater. The set-up may be as simple as a DVD player fed through a stereo system and a larger television set, or as elaborate as an entire room professionally wired with multiple speakers and a projection screen. A home theater system may even include theater-style chairs and an elevated floor for optimal viewing.

The knowledge of how a professional movie theater is designed is helpful to learn more about the working of a Home theater system. Amplifier units are located to the left, right and center of an expansive movie screen, there are also several satellite speakers embedded through the auditorium, including the back. Movie sound editors separate the audio track into as many as six different channels — the audience may hear dialogue in the front left, center and right channels for instance. Other sounds may start from a rear channel and move towards the front. This creates a very realistic audio environment.

Professional movie theaters also project a high-definition film onto an oversized screen which is wider than it is tall. This allows for a more natural visual experience than a typical square television screen provides. The increased definition of a 35mm or 70mm film also gives the movie added realism. All of these aspects of movie-going are recreated in a good home theater system. The DVD player in a home theater system can separate the audio track into two, three or even five channels.

Everyone has different needs and desires about what their media center should be, and may be constrained by different environmental or budgetary limitations. Careful navigation through a detailed methodology ensures that the right choices about design, equipment selection, features, and style are made up front. A few of the questions listed below would be advisable to ponder before setting up a Home theater.

Where is theater going to be located?
How large is the area?
How many people would normally be using the room at a time?
How much ambient noise is there?
How much ambient light is there?
What will the room be used for primarily?
What will the secondary uses be?
What kind of budget do you have?

Since new movies are always being released, the thrill of your theater is renewed each time you sit down in the comfort of your own home with your loved ones. Why not make the most of it?

By: Mitchell Medford

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Mitchell Medford is an author and product consultant for several consumer electronics manufacturers. Visit his website for more information on home theater, LCD TVs, and plasma televisions.

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Breaking The Home Theater Surround Sound Barrier

Breaking The Home Theater Surround Sound Barrier

Once upon a time, in the good old days when I was a boy, you would head off to the cinema in the weekend with your siblings in tow, allowing your parents a few hours of relief from the highly stressful realities of parenting in the seventies. Or something like that. To be honest, I don’t think my parents knew how good they had it back then. We lived at the edge of the world, or as close as you can get to it before falling off the map–in the trouble-free little city of Auckland, New Zealand. Either way, off to the cinema we would go, every weekend. Like dutiful clockwork children of the corn fields, sunshine or rain, good movie or total stinker. Actually, it’s a wonder my force-feed diet of Tarzan, Clint Eastwood, and Bruce Lee did me no lasting harm. Somehow I survived to adulthood, retaining my childlike indulgence for suspended disbelief in a darkened viewing room, minus the mandatory box of chocolate-centered Jaffas, which I have neither seen nor tasted now for perhaps thirty years.

Now, there’s a reason people go to movie theaters, and it’s one that likely factors into why I remember that part of my childhood so well. Watching movies in a cinema is nothing like the experience at home. At least, it was not back then. The big screen was essential to “losing yourself” in the fabricated reality of a big studio production. But, contributing just as much to the success of this movie magic was the concept of surround sound–having the aural component of the experience assault you from multiple directions at once. If I was an engineer I’d probably tell you that, by combining the sound from a number of separated speakers in a coordinated way, it is possible to create a spatial imaging component to the movie-going experience that your television just cannot reproduce. In layman’s terms: surround sound just pulls you into the screen.

Today, wireless surround sound systems exist to do exactly this in your home theater, helping to reduce the difference between the movie house and “in house” movie viewing. More exciting, however, has been the recent development of an audio technology much simpler than any wireless surround sound system. I’m talking about tactile transducers, or Bass Shakers, as they are more commonly known. Instead of depending on a wireless surround sound system to deliver the sensation of “being there”, tactile transducers generate very low frequency vibrational energy that can literally be felt throughout your body. Bass shakers allow you to experience every thump, thrust and shaking motion that the characters in your movies are feeling. By attaching a transducer to a solid surface, like the hardwood backing of a home theater lounger, these vibrations pack an emotional wallop when the storyline action steps up.

When that *thing* jumps out of the closet on screen, you’ll be jumping out of your chair! When those naval guns start pounding in “Sink the Bismarck”, or that T-Rex bellows in “Jurassic Park”, you’ll feel it in your bones. Once you have experienced a Bass Shaker at play, that plain old home theater surround sound system simply will no longer be enough for you.

If you are really adventurous, handy with tools, and have lots of time on your hands, you can buy tactile transducers separately and install them any place where you might also hook up ordinary speakers, including inside your car, if you like. But for the rest of us there is an easier option. Wireless Bass Shakers are built into many models of home theater loungers, including the Metro, Garrick, Este, and Rodeo models found on HomeTheaterSeatingGuide.com. No wires, no installation, no fuss. In fact, there’s no need even to send your kids off to the movie theater by themselves anymore. Not when your family can share together all the thrills, and now spills, of modern day movie viewing in the comfort of your own home theater.

By: Home Theater Seating Guide

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Stephen Carter runs Home Theater Seating Guide, where existing home theater owners can offer home theater seating reviews of loungers and movie seats for the benefit of others looking to furnish their new home theater. HomeTheaterSeatingGuide.com also offers webmasters money-making RSS feeds of its home theater seating reviews. This article may be reproduced elsewhere provided it remains unchanged and includes this attribution section.

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This post was written by admin on December 5, 2008

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Complete The Home Theater Set Up With High-end Home Theater Speakers

Complete The Home Theater Set Up With High-end Home Theater Speakers

Home theaters are getting to be extremely popular among American homes. This modern technology is slowly giving movie theaters a run for their money. Basic knowledge of home theater system and its basic components may be best for people who want to bring home relaxation and entertainment.

The most important consideration in the design and complete set up of your home theater is the size of the room. The home theater speakers and the other components of your home theater may need to consider the size of the room. Too small rooms for your home theater may not require so many speakers. Only three speakers may be good if the room is quite small. Do not overload your small room; you may not be able to get the entertainment and relation you want if you feel overloaded with so many home theater speakers. Because you only need three home theater speakers in your small room, you may need to acquire the high-end brand of home theater speakers to compliment the size of the room and the other equipments for your home theater.

If you have a bigger room however, the basic three home theater speakers may not be enough. You may need to put up to six speakers around the room, you may also consider complimenting your home theater speakers with subwoofer to complete the surround sound like in movie theaters. In addition to the speakers, you may also need to purchase a high-end television set which should not be smaller than 27 inches. It may not be reasonable if you buy a smaller television set because it may drown in the fineness of your home theater speakers. Additionally, the DVD player needs to be of high quality, having progressive scan your DVD Player may help provide sharp images and flicker-free pictures for your home theater system. The home theater speakers, television and DVD player are the basic components of a home theater system especially if the room is quite small. However, for bigger room, adding home theater furniture and home theater projectors may be necessary to complete the package. Again, it may be worth it, if your home theater speakers are of high quality. This is because of the need to provide a surround sound for the home theater set up. The DVD player and the television set may answer for the requirement of sight in a movie theater setup. Your home theater speaker needs to answer for the sound requirement, and if your home theater speaker is not of high quality brand, it may not be able to do the job for you.

In order for you to avoid making mistakes in your choice of home theater equipments including home theater speakers, and home theater furniture, you may require the services of a home theater designer. They will be able to provide the best recommendation that will ensure you will get the most out of your home theater system including topnotch home theater speakers. Additional home theater furniture may be necessary to complete the package and to dress up the whole room. Since they are the designers, they will be able to recommend the best for your home theater system set up. If you have a properly designed home theater, you will be the best entertainment possible.

Your home theater designer may take on the huge responsibility of choosing the most suitable home theater speaker to attain the best design for your home theater.

Bring home relaxation and entertainment right in your own living room, home theater system can provide this to you and your family.

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Surround Sound Philosophy 101

Surround Sound Philosophy 101

There has been a long evolution in commercial movie theater sound. During the first two and a half decades of movie theater presentations, a piano, organ, orchestra, sound effects man, or actors reading the dialog comprised the sound of movies. Electronic sound appeared in 1926 with the coming of the “talkies.” Theaters were wired for sound, and a big speaker perhaps set behind the center of the screen did it all. This was the monophonic sound era. Then stereo sound arrived in the 1940’s with left and right channels. Additional sound channels were added in the 1950’s. (Somewhere in there, a center channel was added to anchor the dialog to the center of the screen.) Finally surround sound came on the scene in the 1980’s in various versions adapted to the acoustic challenges of the commercial movie theater. (The advent of DVD’s brought affordable surround sound to our home theaters.)

Home theater sound can follow any of these commercial movie theater approaches, or it can move beyond to new levels of sonic realism and effects.

One important difference between movie theaters and home theaters is that movie theaters must present acceptable sound to a (hopefully) large group of people sitting at every location of a large room. In contrast, a home theater usually serves a much smaller group of people sitting in a much more limited part of the home theater space.

The limited size of the usual listening/viewing location in a home theater can work to the advantage of home theater owners due to the nature of sound reproduction.

To understand how sound reproduction bears on this discussion, let’s start by considering stereo sound.

In stereo systems, if a listener is closer to the left speaker, all the sound apparently comes from the left speaker. If you have a stereo, turn it on and try this: sit in a location equidistant from the two speakers and listen to a good stereo recording with your eyes closed. Note the spread of locations the sound appears to come from. Now move a few feet to the left of and then to the right of center and notice how the sound which was spread across from left to right collapses into “all left” or “all right”. This failure of the stereo illusion is unavoidable when you use just two speakers. This means there’s always a “sweet spot” (where the stereo effect works best) located on a line centered between the two speakers in a stereo system.

By the way, purchasing more expensive speakers cannot overcome this effect, as the failure of the stereo effect ONLY has to do with both the differences in loudness between the two speakers (due to being closer to one than to the other) and the difference in the time when the sound arrives at your ears from each of the two speakers.

The center speaker in movie or home theaters is an attempt to override this problem by placing a speaker in the middle of the screen for dialogue and other sounds which the film maker wants to make sure comes from the center of the screen, no matter where you sit in the theater. The center channel solves the problem of stabilizing the dialogue but alas, any stereo sound being provided by the front left and front right speakers will still seem to collapse to one side or the other if a person sits well to the left side or the right side of the theater.

So, now let’s consider the surround speakers. In movie theaters, the sound system designers are really stuck in a dilemma. Some audience members are often sitting right under or right next to one of the surround speakers, which means there’s no hope of the person hearing the other surround speakers’ output at the correct volume and at the right time to get any sort of stereo effect from the surround speakers. This is probably why the older Dolby Pro-Logic system rear surround was only monophonic.

Instead, sound system designers for movie theaters apparently threw up their hands and designed and arranged the surround speakers to:

1. Really lag in time, (so the surround sound wouldn’t arrive BEFORE the sound from the main speakers, no matter where you sat, and)
2. Arranged for those speakers to smear their sound all over the back of the theater to mask the problems caused by the great variety of audience/surround speaker time and distance relationships.

Now, along comes home theater.

Most home theater users don’t fill the room with audiences, but the philosophy of earlier commercial theater design is still being applied. You will observe how some home theater rear surround speakers are designed to project sound in multiple directions and how the set up manuals will often direct that the speakers be placed to project their sound away from the main viewing location.

Here’s the thing – if you want to reproduce the movie theater listening experience, use the surround speakers which try to spread sound all over and position those speakers to aid that goal.

But, if you want to enjoy the more accurate sound source positioning (the sound appears to come from some exact location behind you, to your left, right, or even overhead!) made possible by Dolby Digital or DTS, a different approach should be used.

In this approach (labeled “Holosonic Sound” by Gary Reber and the gang at Widescreen Review magazine [www.widescreenreview.com]) the rear speakers are placed behind the viewers at about the same distance from the main listening position as the front speakers. They are usually somewhat further apart than the front speakers. These surround speakers should be:

1. Well matched to the sound quality (timbre) of the front and center speakers.
2. Direct radiating, and pointed at the prime listening position.
3. Capable of handling at least one-third to one-half the power that the front speakers can handle.
4. Located at a height at or slightly above the height of the ears of the audience.
(To prevent sound from the rear speakers from being blocked by seatbacks, they might have to go a bit higher. The viewer’s ears must be able to directly “see” the surrounds.)

Home theater owners whose seats are right back against the wall will have to cope by placing the surrounds on the back wall facing the seating, but spaced well away from the viewers (same distance from the viewers as the distance from the front speakers to the viewers, if possible) to minimize the collapse of the rear stereo effect if an audience member is not sitting exactly between the two rear surround speakers.

Movie makers today are releasing films on DVD with sound that is designed so that home theaters arranged to produce accurate stereo sound from good rear surround speakers will really give you the feeling the you are inside the action, with actors sometimes speaking behind you, and sounds moving right out of the screen over your head.

How do you reliably adjust and test your home theater for the kind of performance we’re talking about here?

Easy! Order the AVIA disk from Ovation Software’s website. (www.ovationmultimedia.com)

Study the materials presented on the AVIA DVD, and then follow the instructions on the disk, or hire a pro to do the job after watching the DVD has helped you to understand the outline of what has to be done. The audio portions of this disk will assist you mightily in tuning up your system if you do it yourself. It contains “circulating” audio test signals that circle around the room and if you set up your theater for accurate surround sound, that test will show you how well surround sound can work in your home theater.

It can be very satisfying to have better surround sound than the commercial movie theaters.

By: Eli Aloisi

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Eli Aloisi is one of the many knowledgable staff members that encompass the PlexHomeTheater.com community. For more great articles check out www.PlexHomeTheater.com
View their website at: www.PlexHomeTheater.com

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HDTV? You Ain’t Seen NOTHING Yet!!! – free article courtesy of …

HDTV? You Ain’t Seen NOTHING Yet!!!
by: Bob Wood

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Remember the Osborn? Or was it the Osborne? Actually, I knew it existed, but didn’t care. This thing was a personal computer. Like we’d ever need one of those? Those new electric typewriters with memory were the rage. THAT was something!

Flash forward and we are upon the reverse engineered UFO goodies. Oh, wait, no, that’s not exactly right.

It’s the dawning of the age of Aquarius, age of Aquarius, Ah QUAR EEEE USSS. Um, no, that was some time ago.

It’s the age of $3 US Gas. Not a good milestone

The age of HDTV!!! Remember when ‘high definition’ included the terms ’stems and seeds?’ You do? You rascal.

No, this is about High Definition TELEVISION. Personally, I feel the word TELEVISON is so…. Fifties. We need a new one there. So did you jump for the Plasma? Or the LCD projector? The DLP? Have you got the home theater with all the tricked out electronics?

Don’t put your ear directly on the high tech train tracks, then, because there’s another train coming, and you’ll hear it down the line.

UHDV is in the pipeline. On the track. In the lab. In the electron wind. Want to guess? Time’s up. ULTRA HIGH DEFINITION.

Remember the movie where they invent this skull cap that would capture your emotions and immediately the bad guy looped someone having how shall we say – some very intense happy times… and turned himself into peak experience broccoli? Is that where all this is headed? Not for a while, if ever. HOWEVER: UHDV is close to the detail of 35mm film. With 7680 x 4320 pixels, this isn’t far from the 4K (4,000 scan line) digital projection systems for big-screen movie theaters.

Donald Trump will be able to see how bad his hair looks like never before.

UHDV features 33 million pixels with a 60 frame-per-second (fps) progressive scan format.

NHK, the Japanese broadcasting giant who had HDTV in the 1980s… is behind the UHDV format, but reassures us it may be a long time before home theater UHDV becomes reality. That’s corporate talk for, ‘Don’t let the competition know how close we really are!’

With 32 times the bandwidth demands of HDTV, UHDV would be prohibitive for today’s broadcast, cable and satellite technology. NHK’s demo required a data rate of 24 Gbps. That was a few years back in Amsterdam where some people were close to hurling lunch because the moving car video hi-jinx was that real.

How real?

NHK cobbled together a custom camera of four CCD image sensors; then to show the output built a LCoS projector combining four eight-megapixel panels. Data storage, using 16 synchronized HDTV recorders, provided roughly 18 minutes of recording time, using 3.5 terabytes of total capacity and a screen about 12 feet high and 22 feet wide. NHK researchers called this ‘the sensation of reality saturation point,’ in the hopes of providing a completely immersive experience: 100 degrees of visual field angle, viewing from a distance of three-quarters of the height of the screen (about nine feet) with at least 60 pixels required for each one degree of visual field angle.

And speakers? UHDV offers 24-channel sound, or 22.2, containing vertically arrayed surround sound speakers: nine above ear level, 10 at ear level, three below ear level and two low-frequency subwoofer channels.

The format, according to NHK, is not so much intended for home use as for museums, public spaces and theaters. You tell The Donald.

Once upon a time there was SHOWSCAN. Special effects pioneer Douglas Trumbull had his demo unit in a suburb of Dallas, behind a Chucky Cheese, if memory serves. I saw the demo.

The equipment and the Showscan Film Process of producing and projecting Showscan films are justifiably proprietary and patented. At the time, Showscan’s discovery was hailed as the most significant advancement in film technology since the introduction of sound in the 1929 film ‘The Jazz Singer’. (Not the one with Neil Diamond.) However, it remained as little more than a technological curiosity until the company developed new camera, high speed projectors, and built special theaters to showcase the revolutionary Showscan images. There was a catch-22 at work. Theaters weren’t equipped for this state of the art projection so they couldn’t convince investors to make films in that format. Solution: do it all in house.

I can’t remember the specs but it was scarily real, 3-D, multi channel and way ahead of multi channel… or HDTV. I do remember it ran film through the gate much faster than normal projection speeds.

Today the company’s simulation and specialty theatres are open or under construction in 24 countries around the world, located in theme parks, motion picture multiplexes, expos, world’s fairs, resorts, shopping centers, casinos, museums, and other tourist destinations where somebody wants a rush.

If NHK can even come close, well…

Enjoy your puny HDTV now while you can, citizen.

About The Author

Bob Wood’s website, http://www.GreatHomeTheater.com, covers the video and audio fields as they apply to home theater and home entertainment. Bob spent many years in the US and Canada at popular radio stations and recording studios as programmer, producer, and talent.

This article was posted on October 07, 2005

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Movie Screens Get Reinvented in 3-D

With box office receipts dwindling year after year, Hollywood executives and movie theater owners are hoping a new plan to update movie screens with digital projection and 3-D technology will help bring people back to the cinema.

Last week, a $700-million deal was announced to equip 10,000 movie theater screens with the innovative digital technology required to show movies in advanced 3-D. Meanwhile, IMAX is in the process of testing its new digital projection system, which it hopes to have in more than 400 theaters by the end of 2009. With box-office numbers sinking, Hollywood executives and theater owners alike are hoping the reinvention of movie screens will help bring people back to the cinema.

The plan for the million-dollar digital-technology makeover was revealed at ShoWest, a Las Vegas conference where studios promote upcoming films. Through the deal, digital cinema provider Access Integrated Technologies Inc., with the financial backing of Disney, 20th Century Fox, Paramount and Universal Pictures, is outfitting movie theaters in the U.S. and Canada with new digital projection equipment over the next three years. The digital technology is valuable to the big movie studios because it eliminates the need for expensive celluloid film, instead projecting movies in a digital format. The technology is also enticing to moviegoers because it provides a sharper picture. And, with some additional hardware and software (and a lot of glasses), the digital theaters will be capable of showing movies in 3-D.

Similarly, entertainment innovator IMAX is looking to advance its own projection technology and expand the number of IMAX theaters worldwide (currently, there are around 300). IMAX theaters feature extra large screens that wrap around the viewer with crystal-clear images and enhanced surround sound. The idea behind the technology is to make viewers feel like they are actually in the movie – shattering conventional boundaries between film and viewer. IMAX theaters also have the technology to play 3-D films. In recent years, the company has been working to remaster Hollywood films like “Apollo 13″ and “Spiderman 2″ for projection in IMAX theaters. Currently, seven major Hollywood films are expected to be released in the IMAX format – including this summer’s surefire hit “The Dark Knight”, the next film in the Batman series. The company believes that showing movies in a unique way gives people a reason to come to theaters rather than watch DVDs at home.

But will digital projection and 3-D movies really help drive moviegoers back to the big screens? The answer seems to be a definitive maybe. The first animated 3-D movie released, Chicken Little in 2005, made nearly double what the 2-D version made (while playing on far less screens). And the recent release “Hannah Montana & Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds Concert” surprised everyone recently by pulling in over $30 million in one weekend playing exclusively on 3-D screens. According to Peter Brown, chairman and chief executive of AMC Entertainment, IMAX screens have been grossing about 300 percent above the industry average for a Hollywood film.

It’s also important to remember that this isn’t your parents’ 3-D. Though the technology has been around since the 1950s, it has definitely come a long way. The blue-and-red glasses are gone, replaced by more effective polarized lenses that make images appear much clearer and far less fuzzy. The technology has developed so much that a number of Hollywood heavies are even making upcoming films with 3-D in mind – a prime example being “Titanic” and “Terminator” director James Cameron’s next film “Avatar”. Still, it remains to be seen whether the new innovations will fill empty seats, or if the movie theaters will ultimately go the way of the drive-in and slowly become a relic of the past.

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Shad Connelly
Published: 3/24/2008
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JBL 60 year history of building the best speakers for recording studios, movie theaters, live sound, home and automotive use.

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