IMAX or XD (Plano, Highland Village, West: chapel, theater, metro)

[batemanjo9]

What do you guys like better, the IMAX screen on Webb Chapel or the XD screens? I think I like XD better b/c there are more seats at the West Plano theater and its closer to home.

[Big G]

Real IMAX >> XD > LieMAX.

I rarely get over to the Real IMAX screen, though. Too far away from Plano and often sold out.

For 3D, I much prefer the RealD system to the IMAX 3D system.

[pappy97]

I don't think it's a simple answer.

First of all, most movies that go "IMAX Experience" don't have any shots on true 70MM film. Recent exceptions have been The Dark Knight and Transformers 2. If you saw those on real IMAX, you know what I'm talking about. In fact, for those movies, the only way to see the entire film in its original aspect ratios (yes, plural) was on true imax.

Every other movie gets no benefit from real imax. It's still film, just blown up to be larger. Sound is okay, but still lossy (lossy means it is compressed and some stuff can be lost, audiophiles notice a difference).

What do you get with XD? You get a huge screen with a digital 2k projector (most of the time, digitial projection = 2k projector, 2048×1080 resolution) and uncompressed PCM sound, which is lossless (bit for bit the same as the original studio master).

In fact any digital projection has the benefit of lossless uncompressed PCM sound. Think high quality blu ray sound x 100.

For me I rarely go true IMAX here because there is only one in the entire metro and it's not convenient for me. At least there are several XD set ups here.

I went out of my way to see Inception at the AMC Highland Village, the only theater in the metro that for every screen has Sony 4k projectors (4096×2160 native resolution), but kind of like with true imax, since the film was NOT filmed with 4k cameras you don't get the most benefit out of it. I WILL see this movie again, and probably XD. Had Chris Nolan used a 70MM camera for some shots like he did with The Dark Knight, I would have only seen it in true IMAX.

By the way, LieMax, aka fake imax, is simply imax digital with 2k projectors. That is one of the big reasons it is so underwhelming. If the screen was as big as real imax or XD that would be one thing, but really it's no different than seeing a 2k projection (Regular digital projection) at Cinemark West Plano with a slightly bigger screen and an additional charge. That's why we hate LIEMAX so much.