This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2006, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
The Wasatch Front gets a dose of high-tech moviegoing with the new Megaplex 20 at the District, which has its grand opening today.
The Larry H. Miller-owned theaters boast 10 new Dolby Digital Cinema projectors, which provide an image as clear as film - but without the scratches and wobbly image to which film projectors are subject.
"This is state-of-the-art," said Paul Pearson, field service manager for Dolby Labs, during a recent tour of the new theater.
Each digital projector can produce a screen image of 2.2 million pixels - 2,048 wide by 1,080 high - whose clarity is comparable to film. The projectors, which cost $100,000 each, produce the image through three processor chips that control an array of tiny mirrors that reflect the right amount of red, green and blue light for each pixel.
Where a movie printed on film arrives on large reels the size of hubcaps, the same film can be loaded onto a 600 gigabyte hard drive the size of a paperback book. Those hard drives are encrypted to prevent anyone from downloading the movie onto the Internet, with the encryption key e-mailed to a theater and downloaded into the projector via a USB port.
Auditorium No. 3 also boasts some of the latest technology to allow the deaf and blind to enjoy movies, said Mike Renlund, assistant manager at Megaplex 20.
One device is Rear Window Captioning, which allows deaf moviegoers to read subtitles unobtrusively. A readerboard on the auditorium's back wall displays subtitles, printed backward. A 10-inch transparent acrylic screen, attached to a gooseneck that plugs into a cupholder, can be adjusted so the moviegoer can read the reflected subtitles superimposed on the screen without disturbing other people.
Descriptive Video Service, or DVS, provides blind moviegoers with a running aural commentary of the onscreen action whenever the actors aren't speaking. The commentary is delivered by a headset, which cannot be overheard by other moviegoers.
Not every movie is released with DVS or the captioning yet, Renlund said, but more studios are gradually signing up.
Renlund said DVS has been a popular feature at the Megaplex 12 at the Gateway. "We have people come all the way from Idaho," he said.