Cathedral City IMax Upgrades

A press release from the company that did the upgrades at the IMax theater.

Be Media and Cinema Group announce the convergence of traditional IMAX and state-of-the-art 4K digital projection from the same theater booth window in the new and improved Desert IMAX Theater of Cathedral City, California. The project is considered to be one of the first [sic] digital 4K projection systems in the giant screen format (15/70). Citizens of the Coachella Valley are now of very few in the world with access to the highest quality and largest presentation of first-run movies, education films, XPAND 3D, gaming consoles, and laptop content.

David Sayah, Be Media's vice president, describes the project: "We were given the task to convert the community's treasured landmark to digital while also maintaining the current IMAX systems in a way that would utilize the entire 70-foot by 52-foot screen, be as bright and beautiful in both 2D and 3D, and be easily controlled and maintained by any member of the theater's staff. It was the perfect undertaking for Be Media and we are extremely proud of the results."

Of special note, the theater has been engineered to display untraditional auxiliary content such as video game consoles, laptops, and microphones and in which all sources are controlled via touch panel. In addition, to enable both IMAX and digital content to be available at any given time, Be Media customized a special platform, cooling system, and control interface. To ensure the longevity of the 4K digital system, Doremi Lab servers, Christie 4K projection, and an XPAND 3D active system were installed.

And then the redevelopment agency went away.