AMC Theaters: Concave-screen and which sound format? (1 Viewer)

[questrider]

I, like many here at the Home Theater Forum, still enjoy going to the cinema and have lately found my "home theater" away from home to be an AMC theater located in the Chicago suburbs. I enjoy this theather immensely for the large auditoriums, huge screens, great sound, stadium seating with high chair backs and fold-up armrests, etc.

However, I'm wondering if there's anyone here with any knowledge as to why the huge screens are concave in shape and also I never see anything anywhere denoting which sound format they use, whether it's Dolby Digital, DTS or SDDS.

Just curious as to anyone who works at an AMC theater would have any knowledge to these technical specifics. I looked on the AMC Web site to no avail.

 

[RobertR]

It's called a torus screen. The curved shape allows for high gain without color shifting or hot spotting.

 

[Holadem]

It might make better sense if you think of the curvature of the screen as an arc (section) of a circle whose center is the lens.

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H

 

[Patrick Sun]

IOW, the sides won't appear to be a little out of focus on a curved screen depending on the distance of the projector from the screen.

 

[Holadem]

I wonder if it's possible to correct for the caveats of a flat screen by optical means?

I much prefer curved screens in any case, no correction needed, and it just looks cooler.

--
H

 

[Patrick Sun]

I think I like flat screens, but mainly in smaller theaters because the curved screens give me a little twinge of depth perception confusion in some instances.

 

[Dave Poehlman]

I remember as a kid we had a theater in town with a curved screen. I remember it being very wide.

However, I remember if you didn't sit towards the middle of the theater, things could look "bent". I particularly remember watching "Star Wars" and seeing the star destroyers kind of "warp" as they moved across the screen.

That theater has since been torn down. :frowning:

 

[Jesse Skeen]

AMC (All Movies Compromised) has an exclusive deal with SDDS (Still Doesn't Do Shit) for most of their theaters.

 

[Mark Kalzer]

Umm..what? SDDS sound is really good quality!

The only real downside to this is that not all movies carry SDDS mixes, and the theatre won't tell you which ones don't. Those without are played in plain Dolby Stereo surround. Basically it means, check before you go!

 

[Tony_Ramos]

Only feature of SDDS is more front channels... Theater sound is still horrible.

Movie sound is wishy washy, home theater sound is truly directional with proper setup. Yay!

 

[Chuck Stephens]

Gonna have to disagree with you there. I worked in a theater that had all 3 sound formats (DTS, Dolby SRD, and SDDS). DTS and Dolby were very close with DTS just slightly edging out Dolby but SDDS was front loaded and lacked bass compared to the other two.