I was about to see Blade Runner 2049 in the new Dolby auditorium, but now it turns out the IMAX version is stretched to 1.9:1 now not sure which way to go. The IMAX will look bigger, even at the mall, if they use the entire surface area, and at say Garden State or such it will look even bigger still. DOlby does have the 4K and slightly deeper blacks and slightly greater contrast overall (even despite the slightly overly lit Dolby auditoriums) and recling seats for a nearly 3 hour long film. May have to see it both ways plus 3D too. Gah! Wondering which way to take those who might onbly see it once though.
But the screen does look crisp, pretty big and the contrast levels do look really good over much of the screen so it really does look pretty impressive visually.
Actually the Dolby screen does have some light leakage from the overly bright blue lights all over, same issue with almost every Dolby cinema. So the lower right corner has the black levels washed out to no darker than at any of the regular screens.
That said the middle part of the screen that matters the most gets pretty black and the overall presentation is still pretty awesome.
Just if they set up their theaters a bit more sensibly, get rid of the 3 blue lights on the ceiling, dim the aisle lighting a bit and put buffers on the tops of the blue aisle lights so they constantly catch the corner of your eye it could then be perfect like at some of the IMAX Laser setups, like the one in Reading, MA where they have zero relflectance onto the screen, zero ceiling lights during the show and minimal aisle lighting none of which catches the perhiperhy of your visions while watching the movie.
But again, even as is, still looks pretty cool.
The volume can be way too loud though and some older movies like Close Encounters can have the high frequencies a bit piercing and uncomfortable.
Not sure why IMAX and Dolby insist on over the top audio levels that 100% for sure cause permanent hearing damage if you go to too many showings. So either damage your ears or wear protection and lose a lot of the sound quality.
You don’t wan’t transients so loud that you wince in pain. And I think everyone knows that many movies keep the volume up nearer the max levels for very extended period of time. Some movies even have regular dialogue making you wince at times.
@CF100 – everyone will soon need hearing aids if they go to these THX, Atomos, IMAX showings too often. Seriously the sound levels ARE too loud and will cause permanent hearing damage if you go too many times without wearing ear protection (at which point the high quality sound doesn’t sound high quality anymore so it’s all moot, so I agree with Al Alvarez).
Hell, some Dunkirk vets said the premiere in London at IMAX and they said it was too loud. Louder than it had been in real life for them.
I’ve heard talk of class action lawsuits brewing over hearing damage from overly loud movie theaters. Many are not much different from a rock concert and everyone knows if you go to too many of those you will damage your hearing, get permanent ringing, etc.
There is a difference between reasonably loud and exciting and absurdly loud, painfully loud, hearing damage loud.
Yeah but since you can chose where to sit, screen size does make a difference.
(Plus, you actually still get a sense that a screen is a bigger and it feels more impressive even if you sit far enough back that it fills up less of your FOV. Sit farther back from a 100' wide screen relatively to FOV than a 60' and it still feels way bigger and more impressive and sitting far back from a 30' screen feels more impressive than sitting 12" away from a 24" wide screen.)
I took a quick peek at the new Dolby Screen. Just a quick peek and it was some number of days ago already so I may have a few details wrong. It seems to be pretty much wall to wall across in width so perhaps it is somewhere around the width of the IMAX screen here, maybe just as wide. Pretty sure it is not as tall though.
It didn’t seem to have the extreme floor light bleeding issue brightening up the bottom half of the screen that has apparently plagued some of the earlier Dolby Cinema screens to a bad degree, although it does have the EXIT light issues that apparently quite a few of the Dolby Cinema setups have had. The EXIT on the left side casts a clear red glow onto the far left edge of the screen (at least it is a relatively small spot compared to the total screen area, so it’s hardly the worst, but it would be cool if there was some way to somehow baffle the light the EXIT casts in the screen’s direction).
It does have a few blue ceiling lights left on during presentation. I have never been a fan of ever leaving on ceiling lights, although Manville does this too (with regular white lights). And overall I think they maybe keep the auditorium a bit brighter lit than the IMAX screen and much brighter than the laser IMAX up in Reading, MA (which is the darkest stadium seating auditorium I have been in, which is awesome, miss those days when a black screen in a movie lets the auditorium be able to plunge into near or total darkness and it helps make the blacks more intense and the contrast ratio better). That said, my vague impression was that the auditorium and screen black were kept a bit darker than at the Paramus Dolby Cinema, where it really seemed too bright from my one quick peak in. I could be wrong though. Hard to remember everything exactly.
Projection looked crisp and rich (although I still think nothing compares to what I saw at the laser Reading, MA IMAX). Sound quality seemed excellent but could get way too loud, painful, so that sort of nullifies the top notch speakers. But if you can tolerate ultra loud, the audio setup does seem to be top notch, probably better than the (also way too loud) IMAX here and for sure better than any of the other screens here (although since a few are quieter here I still prefer that). Not sure if it is quite as good as the Reading, MA laser IMAX audio (also way too insanenly loud).
I do wish DOlby would allow their auditoriums to get as dark as IMAX at least and as dark as some laser IMAX would be even better. That said it’s (the auditorium lighting during presentation, not talking about projetor brightness at all) probably as dark as any of the other non-IMAX screens here.
I only saw a few dark scenes in Anabelle when I peeked in so can’t say too much about the projection other than it’s probably gonna be better than other screens here but probably not as good as laser IMAX at Reading, MA. (although it is the only screen here that has EXIT sign glow).
It’s too bad DOlby Cinema never seems to show 3D since Dolby CInema 3D is better than regular digital IMAX 3D is better than Real3D is better than regular digital Dolby 3D. So far the best 3D I have seen is IMAX Laser 3D at Reading, MA, just superbly perfect (sadly the laser IMAX 3D in NYC at Lincoln square had something horribly wrong with many of the glasses and the left eye got terribly doubling, still not sure if they have really fixed that or not).
As best as I can tell:
Paramus=Elizabeth > Rockaway > Clifton
I believe that Paramus and Elizabeth IMAX screens are the largest in all of northern and central NJ (although I have not yet seen the New Brunswick one, that one is probably at least as large as Rockaway and might be as large as Paramus and Elizabeth, perhaps even larger, although probably not).
I think the only two other screens in all of NJ that might be larger are the two real IMAX screens in the Atlantic City region, but those are far away and I’ve never been to them.
(Thinking about the Chinese more, I think I was probably getting the 80' figure from recalling what they had said about the size of the screen that they had taken OUT and not the one they put in when they put in the new Laser IMAX system, so the 94' probably is correct.
Side, side note, Jersey Gardens theater in NJ has a huge auditorium that has the width to easily support at least a 75' wide screen, maybe even 80', it seems to have mroe like a 65', the problem is down where the screen is the ceiling is really low so they can’t fit much more than a 65' wide one in height wise if they want to keep at least ditigal IMAX ratio, if they were willing to move it up a few rows, which would seem reasonable enough since the place has a zillion seats in it, I’m sure they could fit in at least a 70' digital IMAX screen and I wonder if they could manage a 75', it might even be possible to raise the ceiling a bit down there since I suspect there has got to be some good bit of space up above the ceiling assuming they don’t have some critical pipes and such routed above it right there and then, if they ever went laser, could maybe give northern NJ a huge 80' wide digital IMAX ratio screen)
Back to this one, the weird thing is the auditorium here and screen at first look actually look smaller than the Reading Laser IMAX. I could swear the theater here has less seats across each row. That said once the full Dunkirk trailer started it did seem super looming, running full height, even from second to last row and that did give the sense the screen is the largest around. But the Reading one is huge. I’m sure it’s got to be the 86' you mention for sure and I might have guessed more like 93'. I think the New England Aquarium one is 85'. Anyway, whatever, hard to eyeball and different auditorium shapes can make it trickier to get a feel for what is going on.
I’m not a fan of the buttkickers at Reading, but otherwise it’s the best screen I’ve ever seen (the one here would be second best now for 2D but, at least the day I was there with the glasses they had then, one of the worst ever for 3D). I could swear they keep it, the Reading, even darker in the auditorium than the Laser IMAX here at Lincoln Square so the blacks are just utterly inky and the 3D, at least when I was there, used different glasses that produce utter perfection, just unlike any 3D I’ve seen anywhere else ever, just perfect, while the Laser 3D here ended up being horribly disappointing with the new glasses producing terrible double vision for the right eye, realyl do hope they actually do 100% fix that)
(on a side note for the greater NYC region, NJ really trails behind in screen size, northern and central NJ, AFAIK, tops out at 65' wide, despite it being one of the richest regions in the entire nation. Yet many other states have screens that hit 70', 75', 80', 85' (and CA and NYC even hit over 90', perhaps MA does with the Laser IMAX, not sure, seemed huge though and there had been a long period of 10-20 years where the area topped out at about 50' with most few theaters even having above 36'-38' and there are no true IMAX theaters readily accessible as this theater is an expensive pain to get to for someone from NJ and the only other one is a LONG drive to Atlantic City, I think A.C. now has two screens 70' or wider)
The Chinese is not the largest and especially not the tallest. Even after the upgrade, the Chinese still tops out at 80' wide (the one here is 97' wide) and the Chinese has a digital IMAX ratio so it’s not that tall (compared to a real IMAX ratio screen).
Still 80' wide is one of the wider ones around, although there are some others that wide or wider around.
“The volume levels are carefully tested to meet imax standards.”
Which are louder than most rock concerts where they warn people to wear earplugs or lose their hearing.
And those low volume baby days are a horror, accidentally got tickets for one and quickly walked out and got a refund. It’s just wailing babies and breast feeding moms glaring at you as soon as you round the bend into the theater.
I like it loud but there is reasonably loud like theaters used to be for ages and then their is insanely loud.
Some guys have been bringing in sound meters and finding loud parts over 120dB and a few have found movies where it averaged over 100dB over two hours!
In some theaters even just dialogue can make you wince with pain.
It’s not the ultimate in sound quality if you have to wear earplugs or hold your ears or have them ringing. I’ve walked out of some showings and could barely hear anyone talking for the next hour and ears ringing. That simply can’t be good for your ears.
I still think the volume at most theaters these days, especially IMAX, is too loud. Hearing damage causing loud. Uncomfortably loud.
Believe it or not they invited some who at actually been at Dunkirk to one of the IMAX premieres (different theater) and they said it looked pretty accurate but it was too loud! They said in the IMAX theater it was louder than it had been in real life (at least unless you were so close to a bomb that you didn’t survive)! That just shows how nuts the volume levels have gotten in the the theaters.
The digital IMAX 1.9:1 screen is way bigger than their 70mm equipped 2.34:1 screen if that helps any. I think their IMAX screen is about 65' wide. I think their 70mm one is #15 and I think that one is probably something like 38' wide?
Was it a projection issue with #10 or do you think it was just something a little messed up with some of the 2D to 3D conversion and intrinsic to the video file itself?
And did you notice and color fringing at #10? I haven’t seen a movie on that screen in a number of years but it had horrendous color fringing the last time I did. Just wondering if they fixed that or not.
did ever really truly fix the 3D here (at the Laser IMAX screen)? Is the bad ghosting and messed up glasses issues with uneven poor coatings on the right lenses on some to many of the glasses really fixed?
I was about to see Blade Runner 2049 in the new Dolby auditorium, but now it turns out the IMAX version is stretched to 1.9:1 now not sure which way to go. The IMAX will look bigger, even at the mall, if they use the entire surface area, and at say Garden State or such it will look even bigger still. DOlby does have the 4K and slightly deeper blacks and slightly greater contrast overall (even despite the slightly overly lit Dolby auditoriums) and recling seats for a nearly 3 hour long film. May have to see it both ways plus 3D too. Gah! Wondering which way to take those who might onbly see it once though.
yeah tickets are $ but it is a pretty cool screen
But the screen does look crisp, pretty big and the contrast levels do look really good over much of the screen so it really does look pretty impressive visually.
Actually the Dolby screen does have some light leakage from the overly bright blue lights all over, same issue with almost every Dolby cinema. So the lower right corner has the black levels washed out to no darker than at any of the regular screens.
That said the middle part of the screen that matters the most gets pretty black and the overall presentation is still pretty awesome.
Just if they set up their theaters a bit more sensibly, get rid of the 3 blue lights on the ceiling, dim the aisle lighting a bit and put buffers on the tops of the blue aisle lights so they constantly catch the corner of your eye it could then be perfect like at some of the IMAX Laser setups, like the one in Reading, MA where they have zero relflectance onto the screen, zero ceiling lights during the show and minimal aisle lighting none of which catches the perhiperhy of your visions while watching the movie.
But again, even as is, still looks pretty cool.
The volume can be way too loud though and some older movies like Close Encounters can have the high frequencies a bit piercing and uncomfortable.
Not sure why IMAX and Dolby insist on over the top audio levels that 100% for sure cause permanent hearing damage if you go to too many showings. So either damage your ears or wear protection and lose a lot of the sound quality.
You don’t wan’t transients so loud that you wince in pain. And I think everyone knows that many movies keep the volume up nearer the max levels for very extended period of time. Some movies even have regular dialogue making you wince at times.
@CF100 – everyone will soon need hearing aids if they go to these THX, Atomos, IMAX showings too often. Seriously the sound levels ARE too loud and will cause permanent hearing damage if you go too many times without wearing ear protection (at which point the high quality sound doesn’t sound high quality anymore so it’s all moot, so I agree with Al Alvarez).
Hell, some Dunkirk vets said the premiere in London at IMAX and they said it was too loud. Louder than it had been in real life for them.
I’ve heard talk of class action lawsuits brewing over hearing damage from overly loud movie theaters. Many are not much different from a rock concert and everyone knows if you go to too many of those you will damage your hearing, get permanent ringing, etc.
There is a difference between reasonably loud and exciting and absurdly loud, painfully loud, hearing damage loud.
not sure, I think the Clifton is the smallest of these three in both dimensions. Not quite sure about Paramus vs. Rockaway for the Dolby.
Yeah but since you can chose where to sit, screen size does make a difference.
(Plus, you actually still get a sense that a screen is a bigger and it feels more impressive even if you sit far enough back that it fills up less of your FOV. Sit farther back from a 100' wide screen relatively to FOV than a 60' and it still feels way bigger and more impressive and sitting far back from a 30' screen feels more impressive than sitting 12" away from a 24" wide screen.)
Yeah, probably that is true. Can’t think of any others that would be bigger.
My wild guess is the new Dolby Cinema screen is 58'-60' wide.
I took a quick peek at the new Dolby Screen. Just a quick peek and it was some number of days ago already so I may have a few details wrong. It seems to be pretty much wall to wall across in width so perhaps it is somewhere around the width of the IMAX screen here, maybe just as wide. Pretty sure it is not as tall though.
It didn’t seem to have the extreme floor light bleeding issue brightening up the bottom half of the screen that has apparently plagued some of the earlier Dolby Cinema screens to a bad degree, although it does have the EXIT light issues that apparently quite a few of the Dolby Cinema setups have had. The EXIT on the left side casts a clear red glow onto the far left edge of the screen (at least it is a relatively small spot compared to the total screen area, so it’s hardly the worst, but it would be cool if there was some way to somehow baffle the light the EXIT casts in the screen’s direction).
It does have a few blue ceiling lights left on during presentation. I have never been a fan of ever leaving on ceiling lights, although Manville does this too (with regular white lights). And overall I think they maybe keep the auditorium a bit brighter lit than the IMAX screen and much brighter than the laser IMAX up in Reading, MA (which is the darkest stadium seating auditorium I have been in, which is awesome, miss those days when a black screen in a movie lets the auditorium be able to plunge into near or total darkness and it helps make the blacks more intense and the contrast ratio better). That said, my vague impression was that the auditorium and screen black were kept a bit darker than at the Paramus Dolby Cinema, where it really seemed too bright from my one quick peak in. I could be wrong though. Hard to remember everything exactly.
Projection looked crisp and rich (although I still think nothing compares to what I saw at the laser Reading, MA IMAX). Sound quality seemed excellent but could get way too loud, painful, so that sort of nullifies the top notch speakers. But if you can tolerate ultra loud, the audio setup does seem to be top notch, probably better than the (also way too loud) IMAX here and for sure better than any of the other screens here (although since a few are quieter here I still prefer that). Not sure if it is quite as good as the Reading, MA laser IMAX audio (also way too insanenly loud).
I do wish DOlby would allow their auditoriums to get as dark as IMAX at least and as dark as some laser IMAX would be even better. That said it’s (the auditorium lighting during presentation, not talking about projetor brightness at all) probably as dark as any of the other non-IMAX screens here.
I only saw a few dark scenes in Anabelle when I peeked in so can’t say too much about the projection other than it’s probably gonna be better than other screens here but probably not as good as laser IMAX at Reading, MA. (although it is the only screen here that has EXIT sign glow).
It’s too bad DOlby Cinema never seems to show 3D since Dolby CInema 3D is better than regular digital IMAX 3D is better than Real3D is better than regular digital Dolby 3D. So far the best 3D I have seen is IMAX Laser 3D at Reading, MA, just superbly perfect (sadly the laser IMAX 3D in NYC at Lincoln square had something horribly wrong with many of the glasses and the left eye got terribly doubling, still not sure if they have really fixed that or not).
Manville has two pretty wide 2.40:1 screens, probably as wide as the Rockaway IMAX, at least, but not as tall.
As best as I can tell: Paramus=Elizabeth > Rockaway > Clifton
I believe that Paramus and Elizabeth IMAX screens are the largest in all of northern and central NJ (although I have not yet seen the New Brunswick one, that one is probably at least as large as Rockaway and might be as large as Paramus and Elizabeth, perhaps even larger, although probably not).
I think the only two other screens in all of NJ that might be larger are the two real IMAX screens in the Atlantic City region, but those are far away and I’ve never been to them.
I think it is the same.
(Thinking about the Chinese more, I think I was probably getting the 80' figure from recalling what they had said about the size of the screen that they had taken OUT and not the one they put in when they put in the new Laser IMAX system, so the 94' probably is correct.
Side, side note, Jersey Gardens theater in NJ has a huge auditorium that has the width to easily support at least a 75' wide screen, maybe even 80', it seems to have mroe like a 65', the problem is down where the screen is the ceiling is really low so they can’t fit much more than a 65' wide one in height wise if they want to keep at least ditigal IMAX ratio, if they were willing to move it up a few rows, which would seem reasonable enough since the place has a zillion seats in it, I’m sure they could fit in at least a 70' digital IMAX screen and I wonder if they could manage a 75', it might even be possible to raise the ceiling a bit down there since I suspect there has got to be some good bit of space up above the ceiling assuming they don’t have some critical pipes and such routed above it right there and then, if they ever went laser, could maybe give northern NJ a huge 80' wide digital IMAX ratio screen)
Back to this one, the weird thing is the auditorium here and screen at first look actually look smaller than the Reading Laser IMAX. I could swear the theater here has less seats across each row. That said once the full Dunkirk trailer started it did seem super looming, running full height, even from second to last row and that did give the sense the screen is the largest around. But the Reading one is huge. I’m sure it’s got to be the 86' you mention for sure and I might have guessed more like 93'. I think the New England Aquarium one is 85'. Anyway, whatever, hard to eyeball and different auditorium shapes can make it trickier to get a feel for what is going on.
I’m not a fan of the buttkickers at Reading, but otherwise it’s the best screen I’ve ever seen (the one here would be second best now for 2D but, at least the day I was there with the glasses they had then, one of the worst ever for 3D). I could swear they keep it, the Reading, even darker in the auditorium than the Laser IMAX here at Lincoln Square so the blacks are just utterly inky and the 3D, at least when I was there, used different glasses that produce utter perfection, just unlike any 3D I’ve seen anywhere else ever, just perfect, while the Laser 3D here ended up being horribly disappointing with the new glasses producing terrible double vision for the right eye, realyl do hope they actually do 100% fix that)
(on a side note for the greater NYC region, NJ really trails behind in screen size, northern and central NJ, AFAIK, tops out at 65' wide, despite it being one of the richest regions in the entire nation. Yet many other states have screens that hit 70', 75', 80', 85' (and CA and NYC even hit over 90', perhaps MA does with the Laser IMAX, not sure, seemed huge though and there had been a long period of 10-20 years where the area topped out at about 50' with most few theaters even having above 36'-38' and there are no true IMAX theaters readily accessible as this theater is an expensive pain to get to for someone from NJ and the only other one is a LONG drive to Atlantic City, I think A.C. now has two screens 70' or wider)
“The Chinese screen is 94 ft W X 46 ft H according to the overview on the CT page for that theatre.”
hmm interesting since some other place claimed the upgraded screen was 80' wide
94' wide would be truly tremendous
The Chinese is not the largest and especially not the tallest. Even after the upgrade, the Chinese still tops out at 80' wide (the one here is 97' wide) and the Chinese has a digital IMAX ratio so it’s not that tall (compared to a real IMAX ratio screen).
Still 80' wide is one of the wider ones around, although there are some others that wide or wider around.
I play stuff at home theater with a nice loud volume, sub, top speakers everything but not the point you go deaf or wince.
I have a $1500 headphone amp.
I know about good sound quality.
“The volume levels are carefully tested to meet imax standards.”
Which are louder than most rock concerts where they warn people to wear earplugs or lose their hearing.
And those low volume baby days are a horror, accidentally got tickets for one and quickly walked out and got a refund. It’s just wailing babies and breast feeding moms glaring at you as soon as you round the bend into the theater.
I like it loud but there is reasonably loud like theaters used to be for ages and then their is insanely loud.
Some guys have been bringing in sound meters and finding loud parts over 120dB and a few have found movies where it averaged over 100dB over two hours!
In some theaters even just dialogue can make you wince with pain.
It’s not the ultimate in sound quality if you have to wear earplugs or hold your ears or have them ringing. I’ve walked out of some showings and could barely hear anyone talking for the next hour and ears ringing. That simply can’t be good for your ears.
I still think the volume at most theaters these days, especially IMAX, is too loud. Hearing damage causing loud. Uncomfortably loud.
Believe it or not they invited some who at actually been at Dunkirk to one of the IMAX premieres (different theater) and they said it looked pretty accurate but it was too loud! They said in the IMAX theater it was louder than it had been in real life (at least unless you were so close to a bomb that you didn’t survive)! That just shows how nuts the volume levels have gotten in the the theaters.
The digital IMAX 1.9:1 screen is way bigger than their 70mm equipped 2.34:1 screen if that helps any. I think their IMAX screen is about 65' wide. I think their 70mm one is #15 and I think that one is probably something like 38' wide?
thanks
Was it a projection issue with #10 or do you think it was just something a little messed up with some of the 2D to 3D conversion and intrinsic to the video file itself?
And did you notice and color fringing at #10? I haven’t seen a movie on that screen in a number of years but it had horrendous color fringing the last time I did. Just wondering if they fixed that or not.
holy cow why did the last paragraph of my last post turn into gigantic red letters?
did ever really truly fix the 3D here (at the Laser IMAX screen)? Is the bad ghosting and messed up glasses issues with uneven poor coatings on the right lenses on some to many of the glasses really fixed?