The short version
The screen is not
the picture
A cinema screen is a piece of fabric. The picture is whatever the projector puts on it. Those two things used to be the same shape, and now they often aren't — which is why a cinema can honestly advertise the biggest screen in the country and still show you a smaller picture than the multiplex down the road.
Two screens in Glasgow
These are real, and they are eight miles apart. One has 40% more screen than the other. Press the button and watch what happens to the picture.
Both drawn to the same scale
Glasgow Science Centre
IMAX · digital · 24.4 × 18.3 m
313 m²
of picture
Built for 15/70mm film in 2001, so the fabric is nearly square. Film was removed in 2013 and the digital projector shows a 1.90 picture — 5.5 m of screen never lights up.
Cineworld Silverburn
IMAX with Laser · 24.1 × 13.27 m
306 m²
of picture
Built for digital. The fabric is cut to roughly the shape the projector produces, so almost all of it is used, almost all of the time.
+40%
more screen at the Science Centre
+2%
more picture at the Science Centre
30%
of that screen never lit
Neither cinema is lying. The Science Centre really does have Scotland's largest screen, and says so on its own website. It is simply that “largest screen” stopped meaning “largest picture” the day the film projector came out.
Why shape matters more than width
Cinemas keep the width and cut the height. Every format below is the same width — what changes is how much you get above and below.
| Shape | Where you see it | Picture vs scope |
|---|---|---|
| 1.43:1 | 15/70mm film, and GT laser houses | +67% |
| 1.90:1 | Most digital IMAX showings | +26% |
| 2.39:1 | A standard widescreen release | — |
Measured at matched width, which is how cinemas actually project. You may see “40% more” quoted for 1.43 — that is the share of the tall frame missing from a scope image, a different sum from a different starting point.
“IMAX” means five different things
The logo above the door is the same in all five cases. The ticket price usually is too.
15/70mm film
The original, and still the best picture in commercial cinema. Roughly 40 rooms worldwide still run it. Shows the full 1.43 frame.
GT dual laser
Two 4K laser projectors. The only digital system that fills the full 1.43 frame. Found in flagship rooms.
Commercial laser (CoLa)
A single laser projector, 1.90 only. The most common modern install by a wide margin.
Laser XT
Another single-laser commercial system, 1.90 only. IMAX publishes no specification separating it from CoLa, so we score them identically.
Digital xenon
Two 2K projectors and a xenon lamp that dims as it ages. Designed for screens no wider than 21.3 m. Being replaced, but plenty remain.
Questions people actually ask
How do I know which IMAX I'm booking?+
Usually you can't tell from the booking page, which is the problem this site exists to solve. Look the venue up here and check the projection line. If a cinema has laser it tends to advertise it; silence usually means xenon, though not always.
Is a bigger screen always better?+
No — a bigger screen showing a shorter picture can give you less than a smaller screen that fits its projector, which is exactly what happens in Glasgow. What matters is the lit area, and how much of your field of view it fills from your seat.
Is seeing a film in 70mm actually different?+
Substantially. Across the 41 venues showing The Odyssey in 70mm, the film print puts up an average of 31% more picture than the digital showing in the same room — and at most of them it is a clean 33%, because the print fills the full height of a screen the digital projector can only partly light.
What is LieMAX?+
An enthusiast term for a small screen sold at IMAX prices. We only apply it to screens we have actually measured, under 16 m wide — roughly the smallest tenth of the network. The median IMAX screen is 20 m, so flagging everything below that would mean nothing.
Why do some venues show a tilde and a dashed badge?+
Because we are not certain about the projector. Most of our projection data traces to an industry listing that closed in 2021, and IMAX has converted a great many screens to laser since. Where we cannot confirm it from a current source, the score is marked provisional rather than presented as exact.
Is a museum IMAX worse than a cinema one?+
Not inherently, and several are among the best rooms anywhere. They do tend to be older, which cuts both ways: many kept 15/70mm film long after multiplexes stripped it out, while others were converted to digital and left with a tall screen they can no longer fill.
What we don't know
Screen dimensions are the strongest part of this dataset; projector data is the weakest. Roughly a quarter of venues have a projector we can trace to a current source — the rest carry a 2021 record we haven't been able to re-confirm, and those scores are shown as provisional. We would rather say so than round it off.
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