Which IMAX is actually worth the trip?
Not every screen with an IMAX sign on it is the same format. Ranked by picture quality, best first — this is the ordering IMAX enthusiasts broadly agree on, and it turns on three things: whether the picture is film or digital, whether the screen shows the full tall 1.43:1 frame or a cropped 1.90:1 one, and how big the screen physically is.
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15/70 mm film
The real thing. A 70 mm frame run sideways through the projector, about ten times the area of a standard 35 mm frame and commonly reckoned to out-resolve any digital cinema format. Shown at 1.43:1, so the picture fills your view from floor to ceiling. GT 3D and GT are the grand-theatre projectors; SR is the smaller-house version. Only 58 theatres on this list still run it, which is the entire reason for the 70 mm filter.
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IMAX GT Laser
The best digital IMAX. Two 4K laser projectors superimposed, with the widest colour range and deepest blacks IMAX has shipped — and, crucially, the only digital system that fills the tall 1.43:1 frame. If you can't get to a film house, get to one of these.
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IMAX CoLa
Very good, but wider and shorter. IMAX's single-projector "commercial laser", now the most widely installed system. Excellent contrast and brightness, but almost always in a 1.90:1 auditorium — you get a cropped frame compared with the two above.
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IMAX Laser XT
A laser system built for mid-size auditoriums. Good picture, smaller room, 1.90:1.
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IMAX Digital
The weakest of the bunch. The older twin 2K xenon system at 1.90:1 — dimmer and softer than anything above it, and the reason the phrase "not real IMAX" exists. Being retired steadily.
Dome Domes (also sold as OMNIMAX) sit outside the ranking — a tilted hemispherical screen that wraps past the edge of your vision. Different rather than better, and mostly science museums showing documentaries rather than features.
1.43:1 Worth repeating on its own: the aspect ratio can matter as much as the projector. A 1.43:1 screen shows the full-height IMAX frame; a 1.90:1 screen shows a wider, shorter crop of it. Filter by Screen shape → 1.43:1 to see only the tall ones.