UK Distributor AWE Mounts First European Demo of Imax Enhanced Video System

AWE, the U.K. distributor of high-end specialty audio and video brands for custom installers, featured the first European demo Tuesday of the new Imax Enhanced video system with DTS-X surround sound. It staged the demo on a preview day for media and the trade of the Smart Home Expo it organized Wednesday and Thursday at its headquarters in Epsom, about 20 miles southwest of London. The demo used a test Ultra HD Blu-ray disc that DTS parent Xperi prepared with Imax to showcase Imax Enhanced on a $79,000 home theater system. The Imax Enhanced demo’s sound and pictures were expectedly loud and clear, but there was no opportunity for comparison with other versions of the same content. One novelty was a sequence in which the vertical expansion of the image was switched on and off. This showed how theatrical widescreen content can be displayed on a 16:9 consumer screen, without customary edge cropping or letterbox masking, and without image shape distortion. Technical information on Imax Enhanced was thin, with no details of the HDR system used, or how picture expansion without distortion is achieved. By coincidence, a lengthy and detailed U.S. patent application (20180288379) published Oct. 4 at the Patent and Trademark Office describes how image mapping can improve on systems such as Digital Imax by displaying content with a wide range of different picture ratios on a fixed size theatrical screen, without edge cropping or letter-boxing and without adding image shape distortion.