I went to an IMAX™®℠℗(U.S. Patent 3,494,524) theatre once.
Having to recline and look up at the screen was annoying, and the size was gratuitous with most of it wasted to peripheral vision. That's definitely not something I'd want in my living room.
Having to recline and look up at the screen was annoying, and the size was gratuitous with most of it wasted to peripheral vision. That's definitely not something I'd want in my living room.
From what I understand, movies shot specifically for IMAX are meant to be framed something like a stage play, with your eyes wandering around the screen rather than staying fixed near the center.
Of course, that presumes the movie was made for it (or had a cut framed specifically for it), rather than just being "normal theatrical cut but bigger".
Sadly, the IMAX CEO says screen size does not matter [1] and thus the majority of them are being replaced by smaller digital screens in multiplexes. lfexaminer.com has a great list of IMAX theaters and their formats [2].
[1] http://www.wired.com/2009/05/imax-ceo-screen-size-isnt-every...
IMAX, especially as current IMAX Digital theaters have similar screen sizes and also only 2.8K (two 2K projectors on the same screen), just isn’t really worth it anymore.
It's a horrible experience. You can buy a horribly cheap TV, a 5.1 sound system and plop it in your living room and get a better experience. Getting the sound right takes a long time, but my end conclusion was that suspending bunch of cardboard everywhere seemed to negate the poor acoustics of the room.
The first feature is a function of sitting to close to the screen, and isn't specific to IMAX format. The second is by design -- a major point of large-format cinema screens like IMAX is to provide a more immersive experience by making it so that, in shots where there is a strong central focus, even the non-focal parts of your vision field are occupied by the movie screen rather than (usually, just black) background from the theater, and, second, enabling shots that are composed so as to invite audience members to not just focus near center, but to look around the screen (this second feature isn't taken advantage of in films not designed for large-format screens, but major films now generally are made in a large-format aware manner.)