[WhiteTiger]

I went out and saw a movie tonight. I don't have a review of the movie for you, but rather, one of the theatre experience...

Spoiler!

I went to a "ScreenX" showing. I did not know what a ScreenX showing was, but figured I'd give it a shot. I raised a brow at the ticket price (1 adult/$19.99) but figured I'd give it a go. The ticket kiosk mentioned that ScreenX meant a "270 degree viewing experience."

That had me curious. I've seen movies on the U shaped screens before, and it's an interesting experience. Not a better one, but an interesting one. I thought I might be in for a bit of a treat.

I head into the theatre to see that it has a 'normal' screen. Now I'm really curious about this 270 degree experience. The movie starts...and the walls of the theatre light up, acting like 2 additional screens. Here's where the problems begin.

This was like looking at 3 computer monitors set up poorly. The walls are set to the seating, so the picture starts out slightly smaller than the 'silver screen' size at front, and makes its way jaggedly down to a narrow point at the very back of the theatre.

But the walls are long! The theatre was almost empty (I was one of five people in it) and I was sitting dead center in the very last row. I still had to fully turn my head to see any one of the three "screens" fully, missing almost all of whatever was on the second screen, and not seeing the third at all. So it's very easy to miss things, as you may not be looking at the screen you need to be looking at when something happens.

The screens did not line up. Again, to use the 3 monitor example, it's like the monitors weren't quite lined up right, so the picture did not match seamlessly or even close to seamlessly, with at least 6-12 inches of difference in the matchup point.

The walls are not "silver screen" colored...so all three screens had their own color setup, that did not match each other, which threw things off even more.

To add further to the mess, to project onto the walls, they needed opposite side projectors, which hung down into the picture and were completely and unavoidably visible and unmistakable. On top of that, all the walls usual safety features stood out. So the bright green "Exit" signs stood out, as well as two fire alarm boxes on each side.

I thought that I MIGHT be able to get used to all of that over the course of the movie, but there's another monkey wrench thrown in...the two extra screens aren't used for the entire film. I could determine no reason behind when they would or wouldn't be used, but it was almost inevitable that I'd be watching the only active screen in the middle, and all of the sudden the two 'wall' screens would light up and I'd have to figure out where to look...and as soon as I did, it'd be back to a single screen in the middle.

When the movie finally ended and the credits started to roll, the house lights came up a bit, as they usually do...and the mid-credits stinger comes on. The lights at the top of the wall washed out the top half of the 'screen' on the wall, and the bright LED light strip along the entire bottom of the wall washed out of the bottom half of it, so I got to watch the middle 1/3 of the scene.

All in all, I will be staying far way from anything "ScreenX" for quite some time, unless they managed to sort a lot of this out. It was a confusing, unpleasant movie-going experience and certainly not one I have any interest in paying $20 for again.