Cineworld Cinema - Whiteley
Whiteley Way,
Whiteley,
Fareham,
PO15 7PD
Whiteley Way,
Whiteley,
Fareham,
PO15 7PD
1 person
favorited this theater
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It turns out that some LED fittings contain drivers which at a lower voltage simply turn off some LEDs rather than “dimming” all of them.
Hmm… I can imagine this not being such a bad idea if they’ve used colour temperature controllable luminaires with separately packaged groups of LEDs emitting different colour temperatures. The “warm white” colour temperature LEDs alone could then be lit during the feature… and, as you say, a diffuser could be added (which would cut the light level also.)
Unbelievable that Cineworld would persist in specifying a dud configuration—especially considering that their current generation foyers aren’t penny-pinching with lighting; they’re stuffed full of LED lighting/displays!
The best way I can describe it is, if you imagine a lot of LED bulbs or lights have multiple LEDs inside them rather than one single chip. Let’s say hypothetically that the 10cm diameter downlighter has 8 LEDs inside it – 4 of them go out for the trailers, then when the feature starts it drops down to two. So it’s a kind of dimming I suppose but comes across as very crude, would work better if they had a diffuser of some sort.
Zappomatic: Simply switching off some of the lights is poor. Do the LEDs dim at all? It seems that they have omitted dimmers, or possibly the LEDs are the non-dimmable type? Very strange.
I have uploaded a photo taken as I vacated Vue West End Screen 6 (August 2017); the house lights failed to come up when the movie finished. The auditorium was pitch black except for the red strips on the step edges!
The lighting issue seems to be common to all recent Cineworld builds and many of their refurbishments.
For example their cinema at the O2 as opened already had LED lighting in all of the screens but of course back in 2007 the output from LED bulbs was pretty poor in both colour, spread and brightness; the ceiling had lots of lights but all pretty dim and relatively free of glare.
Skip forward to the recent refurbishment and the ceiling now has fewer, brighter luminaries in a warmer colour tone. Fine as house lights (if a little stark) however instead of dimming all the LEDs in each fixture, the number of LEDs illuminated is reduced. Still way too bright, and as they’re situated across the auditorium and not just over stairs they create a lot of glare particularly for those wearing glasses. I can’t understand why they persist with this design as Facebook, Twitter and various review websites are full of people complaining about the lighting. The stairs and walkways have their edges nicely lit with LED strips so the safety argument doesn’t really stack up.
The two largest auditoria (Nos 1 and 9) have Scope screens with side masking. The other 7 auditoria have just 1.85 ‘Flat’ screens necessitating that Scope films are shown letterboxed with the inevitable slight truncation to 2.32. There is no top/bottom masking.
Given that most films nowadays are in Scope it does seem strange that anyone would build a new cinema without proper Scope screens. I did write to Cineworld about this but received no understandable answer. In the past (and as recently as 2012) Cineworld were building multiplexes with all Scope screens but many of their more recent builds seem to go for this mixed approach.
Also the lights are not turned off during the film, just dimmed. Together with the fact that the walls are red covered which reflects light (as can be seen in the photo section), the auditorium is not really very dark during the film.
Praise is given on User websites to the good seating and legroom. That may be true, but all in all, the lack of Scope screens, the general brightness during the film and the closeness of the screen to the front half of the seats in some of the smaller auditoria does not make this a good place to watch movies in. It is, simply, just badly designed.