Dolby Cinema

I've seen 2 movies in a Dolby Vision theater.
Love it.
I wish The Revenant could be re-released in Dolby Vision as that was kind of a benchmark presentation for me.

 

The Revenant was mastered by colorist Steve Scott at Technicolor in Dolby Vision, so it's just a question of the studio issuing it in that format (theatrical or home video).

 

Regarding the way Dolby implements the larger number of channels in Atmos, they use a concept of "sound objects." In a document about the home implementation of Dolby Atmos, they describe the basics of the theater system (http://cdn-blog.dolby.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/Dolby-Atmos-for-the-Home-Theater.pdf), Dolby notes a "bed" of 9.1 channels and a capability of up to 118 sound objects. Sound mixers decide the positioning and movement of the sound objects in a 3 dimensional space and that metadata goes along with the film. An Atmos setup doesn't have to have the current maximum of 64 speakers around (and above) the viewer. The equipment at the theater (or at home) uses the metadata to position sound objects within the available number of channels. I assume the metadata can scale the opposite direction if Dolby wants to create some extreme Atmos setup with 128 or more speakers.

I saw Baby Driver a week or so back in a Dolby Cinema presentation. In some ways this is the kind of film that can best demonstrate the capabilities of Atmos. About 10 or 15 minutes into the film, there's a scene where the main character walks to a coffee shop and back, but it plays like a choreographed music video, because the sounds of things happening around him line up with the song he's playing through his earbuds. As the character walks and the camera circles around him, those street noises move around the Atmos environment. Many scenes later in the film are action-packed, and almost all of them have songs, but the use of the Atmos to position sounds didn't seem as creative throughout. In some scenes, they panned the voice of a character walking off-screen along the side of the theater. Personally, I think using that technique on primary dialogue is a little distracting. But the coffee scene is the demo material.

 

Sounds like fun.