AMC and Dolby are taking movie theaters to the next level

I can’t blame you if you have no idea what Dolby Cinema is. For one reason or another, the fusion Dolby’s dual 6P 4K HDR-capable laser projectors and the company’s Atmos sound format hasn’t been picked up by many news outlets. If none of that made sense, let’s just say it’s a super badass way to watch movies, and it’s being implemented in around 100 AMC theaters. 

If you’ve never heard of Dolby Cinema, that’s quite alright — news of its development managed to slip under the radar somehow. But chances are it’s coming to a theater near you. Today, San Francisco-based Dolby announced a partnership with theater chain AMC to bring Dolby Cinema to 100 theaters over the next decade. Just what is Dolby Cinema, exactly? It’s Dolby’s branded marriage of dual Christie-made 6P 4K, HDR-capable laser projectors with the company’s Atmos sound format. For the uninitiated, HDR, or high dynamic range, is a method of video and photo capture that combines several images — one overexposed (“blown out”), underexposed (“dark”) and normalized — into a single frame. The result is a more vivid image — brighter whites, darker blacks, and color contrast much more reflective of what we see in the real world. Dolby calls it “Dolby Vision.”