I agree, of the three films I’ve so far heard in Atmos, this by far was the best. While the image for the first screening of last Friday was decent and conveyed some great dimensionality, far off images still seemed blurry – I really hope at some point AMC would just uninstall the two projector system and replace it with a single projector ‘Solaria’ 4K system. ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’s audio was just painful, I told the manager after 'Oz’s screening this was just exemplory (and then a quick comment that 'Die Hard 5’ was just beyond loud, which she agreed).
Jodar, in terms of the ETX screen not featuring ‘The Hobbit’ in HFR is baffling, since most specialty large screens have been upgraded to playback in 48fps – maybe AMC didn’t want to compete within it’s own theater/complex and give the IMAX presentation an upper hand – my guess is that the since the dual-projector is glitchy to begin with, updating to playback in HFR could be problematic. Fandango’s listing makes no mention that the ETX screen is HFR, it only applies to the IMAX-D presentation.
boring? oh well, to each his own… I’ve seen it twice now and I loved every minute of it. As for the ETX screening on their new ‘Dolby Atmos’ setup – (all 64 speakers) was mindblowing, if not a bit too loud at times. The use of multi speakers and panning of the sound was highly effective. Troll voices were placed above the Dwarves dialogue, suggesting height. Spiders attacking Radagast’s home had them audibly crawling over the audience’s heads – the ceiling speakers came also into heavy play during the city attack by Smaug and the huge chunks of boulder’s the Thunder Gods hurled at each other. In Gollum’s cave, his dis-attached voice echoing around (ours) and Bilbo’s head was amazing and placed . When the warg’s attacked one of their own orcs, his ‘loud’ demise literally behind the audiences' back was visceral and wide soundstage of carnage. Having heard the film prior in 7.1, the Atmos experience was heads (pardon the pun) above that mix.
As for ‘Star Trek: Into Darkness’ – my first choice would be to see this in 15/70 IMAX, as some of the scenes were shot similar to the two latter Dark Knight movies where full screen shots take up the entire wall/screen to maximum effect.
saw ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ this afternoon on the RPX screen, sitting in the middle was perfect in hearing the 7.1 audio mix and great peripheral eyesight lines – the ‘High Frame Rate’ was interesting – the ultra sharpness of the image was outstanding, but the lack of grain and the slight speed up, really did make it look video-esque.
screen 6: will be showing ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ in ‘high frame rate’
screen 9 has not been upgraded to playback the film as such.
screen 6 has me worried because when I saw ‘Titanic’ there, the light output was on the low side thus resulting in very little 3D pop and depth. ‘The Bourne Legacy’ on screen 9 though had great detail due to better brightness (unfortunately the movie was rather crappy).
Bow Tie though must be given some credit, along with Cinema Arts (three of the six screens) and the new Angelika Mosaic in providing 7.1 surround sound in all of it’s auditoriums – Regal and AMC fail in this respect
“almost ready” isn’t cutting it, the first Hobbit movie is a top tier movie where Bow Tie should have had everything in place to compete with the Regal’s and AMC’s in the DC metro area – on the plus side, at least the film will be presented in 7.1 discrete surround sound.
I don’t who you talked with thebrat at the theater, but ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ on the BTX screen is neither in Atmos OR High Frame Rate [insert mad face]
The DC area debut of Dolby’s Atmos system begins this weekend with the opening of the ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’. The soundsystem while already amazing in my opinion, is going to sound even more spectacular, sadly the projection image is something I’m not looking forward to: the last film I saw there, ‘Finding Nemo’ was terrible. A lot of double imaging happened throughout the entire film and the 3D ‘pop’/depth effect was sparse to non-existent. The sound though was tremendous notably in the bass department with the whale sequence and Darla banging on the aquarium which made the whole auditorium shake and rumble to maximum effect.
sorry to disrupt your flow there nick3 – great read by the way, I remember the theater when they were showing their horror movies at the beginning of 1980 – I was too young though to go see movies and the R/unrated flicks that were being shown. I think Lucio Fulci’s ‘Zombie’ was shown here.
question: so if the BTX screen can show a scope film without borders, how did it show ‘Life of Pi’ (which is 1.85) did they crop the top and bottom off? or did the film have side black borders? Is the theater really going to be ready for Dolby Atmos for the first Hobbit film – their own website is not advertising this fact.
I doubt it’s the original screen but there IS a theater space inside the National Museum of Woman in the Arts building – that can present film screenings.
I saw ‘Lord Jim’ and ‘Khartoum’ earlier this year at the AFI Silver and those 70mm prints were outstanding – the former in particular looked nearly mint. Odd that the ‘West Side Story’ screening doesn’t mention if the soundmix is the original 6-track mix that recently got restored. … and damn CBS Home Video for a flawed hidef transfer/bluray release of ‘My Fair Lady’ – maybe since Warner’s just got back the rights to the film, another proper transfer of the original 65mm elements can be done now.
The standalone IMAX-Digital screen will be situated next to the Pole Position indoor race track on the third floor – will be curious in seeing how the height perspective of the screen itself will be integrated.
so which facebook is which? there’s one listed as Senator theater and one as ‘True Friends of the Senator’
I remember going out here since it was one of the first complexes to feature Sony’s SDDS sound system – ‘Open Siege 2’s soundtrack rocked!
^ oh god I hope not Mike.
I agree, of the three films I’ve so far heard in Atmos, this by far was the best. While the image for the first screening of last Friday was decent and conveyed some great dimensionality, far off images still seemed blurry – I really hope at some point AMC would just uninstall the two projector system and replace it with a single projector ‘Solaria’ 4K system. ‘A Good Day to Die Hard’s audio was just painful, I told the manager after 'Oz’s screening this was just exemplory (and then a quick comment that 'Die Hard 5’ was just beyond loud, which she agreed).
^ correct ‘One Life’ was 1.85
and … ??
was the presentation of West Side Story the restored five front channel soundmix?
Jodar, in terms of the ETX screen not featuring ‘The Hobbit’ in HFR is baffling, since most specialty large screens have been upgraded to playback in 48fps – maybe AMC didn’t want to compete within it’s own theater/complex and give the IMAX presentation an upper hand – my guess is that the since the dual-projector is glitchy to begin with, updating to playback in HFR could be problematic. Fandango’s listing makes no mention that the ETX screen is HFR, it only applies to the IMAX-D presentation.
boring? oh well, to each his own… I’ve seen it twice now and I loved every minute of it. As for the ETX screening on their new ‘Dolby Atmos’ setup – (all 64 speakers) was mindblowing, if not a bit too loud at times. The use of multi speakers and panning of the sound was highly effective. Troll voices were placed above the Dwarves dialogue, suggesting height. Spiders attacking Radagast’s home had them audibly crawling over the audience’s heads – the ceiling speakers came also into heavy play during the city attack by Smaug and the huge chunks of boulder’s the Thunder Gods hurled at each other. In Gollum’s cave, his dis-attached voice echoing around (ours) and Bilbo’s head was amazing and placed . When the warg’s attacked one of their own orcs, his ‘loud’ demise literally behind the audiences' back was visceral and wide soundstage of carnage. Having heard the film prior in 7.1, the Atmos experience was heads (pardon the pun) above that mix.
As for ‘Star Trek: Into Darkness’ – my first choice would be to see this in 15/70 IMAX, as some of the scenes were shot similar to the two latter Dark Knight movies where full screen shots take up the entire wall/screen to maximum effect.
saw ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ this afternoon on the RPX screen, sitting in the middle was perfect in hearing the 7.1 audio mix and great peripheral eyesight lines – the ‘High Frame Rate’ was interesting – the ultra sharpness of the image was outstanding, but the lack of grain and the slight speed up, really did make it look video-esque.
The IMAX-D projector is ‘High Frame Rate’ – the ETX screen is not.
screen 6: will be showing ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ in ‘high frame rate’
screen 9 has not been upgraded to playback the film as such.
screen 6 has me worried because when I saw ‘Titanic’ there, the light output was on the low side thus resulting in very little 3D pop and depth. ‘The Bourne Legacy’ on screen 9 though had great detail due to better brightness (unfortunately the movie was rather crappy).
Bow Tie though must be given some credit, along with Cinema Arts (three of the six screens) and the new Angelika Mosaic in providing 7.1 surround sound in all of it’s auditoriums – Regal and AMC fail in this respect
“almost ready” isn’t cutting it, the first Hobbit movie is a top tier movie where Bow Tie should have had everything in place to compete with the Regal’s and AMC’s in the DC metro area – on the plus side, at least the film will be presented in 7.1 discrete surround sound.
I don’t who you talked with thebrat at the theater, but ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ on the BTX screen is neither in Atmos OR High Frame Rate [insert mad face]
The DC area debut of Dolby’s Atmos system begins this weekend with the opening of the ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’. The soundsystem while already amazing in my opinion, is going to sound even more spectacular, sadly the projection image is something I’m not looking forward to: the last film I saw there, ‘Finding Nemo’ was terrible. A lot of double imaging happened throughout the entire film and the 3D ‘pop’/depth effect was sparse to non-existent. The sound though was tremendous notably in the bass department with the whale sequence and Darla banging on the aquarium which made the whole auditorium shake and rumble to maximum effect.
sorry to disrupt your flow there nick3 – great read by the way, I remember the theater when they were showing their horror movies at the beginning of 1980 – I was too young though to go see movies and the R/unrated flicks that were being shown. I think Lucio Fulci’s ‘Zombie’ was shown here.
question: so if the BTX screen can show a scope film without borders, how did it show ‘Life of Pi’ (which is 1.85) did they crop the top and bottom off? or did the film have side black borders? Is the theater really going to be ready for Dolby Atmos for the first Hobbit film – their own website is not advertising this fact.
I doubt it’s the original screen but there IS a theater space inside the National Museum of Woman in the Arts building – that can present film screenings.
I guess it’s a stretch that either of the two 3D screens will be playing this at 48fps ?
I saw ‘Lord Jim’ and ‘Khartoum’ earlier this year at the AFI Silver and those 70mm prints were outstanding – the former in particular looked nearly mint. Odd that the ‘West Side Story’ screening doesn’t mention if the soundmix is the original 6-track mix that recently got restored. … and damn CBS Home Video for a flawed hidef transfer/bluray release of ‘My Fair Lady’ – maybe since Warner’s just got back the rights to the film, another proper transfer of the original 65mm elements can be done now.
The standalone IMAX-Digital screen will be situated next to the Pole Position indoor race track on the third floor – will be curious in seeing how the height perspective of the screen itself will be integrated.
screen #1 got upgraded to ‘RPX’ for the release of ‘Life of Pi’
I think this is the first AMC in the DC metro area to offer ‘reserved seating’ [thumbs up!]
so it looks like ‘Flight’ will continue it’s run on the BTX screen and NOT ‘SkyFall’ [face palm]