Ster Century Cinemas Zilina

Ster Century Cinemas Zilina was opened 15th November, 2010 and was originally named City Cinemas Zilina. Its opening caused the closing of the last single screen cinema in the town (Kino Centrum). The reason was that the cinema operator Tatrafilm wanted to use the installed digital technology for its new site.

The miniplex is located in the Mirage shopping centre, on the third floor. It has four screens and a total capacity of 495 seats. The auditoriums have relatively the same size. The largest has 166 and the smallest 101 seats. Overall, the theatre leases a 990 square meters area in the Mirage shopping centre.

The opening of the cinema and the centre itself is an interesting story. For the favor of customers, tenants and also cinema operators fought two large projects at the same time. The Mirage shopping center was a project of a local businessman and AuPark Zilina a project of a Slovakian company that has projects throughout Central Europe.

As Zilina has already a five-screen miniplex CineMAX in the southern part of the town, there was only real space for one additional theatre. The fight over a cinema operator finally won the local entrepreneur. The problem is that most of the anchor tenants are settled in the AuPark center. What does it mean? Aupark is the best address in town for shopping, but if you want a good entertainment, visit the Mirage. In addition to the theatre it also offers bowling and mini-golf.

The miniplex is operated by the largest Slovak film distributor Tatrafilm, who distributes movies from Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks, Universal Pictures and 20th Century Fox. Ster Century Zilina was Tatrafilm’s second investment into a multi-screen cinema. The first was opened 29th October, 2009 in the second largest Slovak city Kosice. With openings in Spisska Nova Ves and Prievidza in April 2012 Ster Century Cinemas became a serious player on the multi-screen cinema market in Slovakia, which is dominated by the local company CineMAX and international operator Cinema City International.

In 2011, when the Israeli company Cinema City purchased the Palace Cinemas chain, Tatrafilm changed the name of its chain and used the deactivated brand Ster Century to prevent irritation of customers about the similar names.

In its Zilina miniplex Ster Century uses Bacro DP2K-20C projectors with implemented Dolby 3D technology and Dolby DSS200 cinema servers. The Ster Century chain is the only one in Slovakia that uses the most advanced audio standard Dolby Surround 7.1.

For the digitization of the last 35mm screen (#3) a grant from the Slovak Audiovisual Fund was acquired. It was in the amount of 10,000 Euros (about 13,000 US$), or about 14 percent of the total investment costs. The grant was the only successful application of the six submitted by Tatrafilm.

Interestingly, all three Slovak cinema operators use a different 3D technology. CineMAX uses the Slovenian system xPand, Cinema City the Korean system Master Image and Ster Century the American system Dolby 3D. Only the xPand system needs active glasses.

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