Ice Skating VS IMAX, a economy smart decision?

Partially true. The real reasoning is that a lot of modern day movies are shot in 2.40:1 (or somewhere around that range, give or take - it's equivalent to somewhere around 22:9 if you can imagine that in a TV) aspect ratio, which equates to "anamorphic" wide screen. It's way wider than standard 16:9 widescreen which is somewhere around 1.78:1 aspect.

IMAX, however, is shot at or around 1.78:1 (or 16.02:9), which makes it the exact shape to fill your TV or a standard wide screen IMAX or movie screen. Some non IMAX movies are also filmed using this aspect ratio, which is why they will also fill a widescreen TV. When you go to the movies, you can see that a lot of them have a curtain around the screen that allows it to open from a 16:9 to a much wider screen, so the film will actually fill it.

Whew - anyone confused yet? It's very possible I just rambled a lot but I'm having kind of a rough day so please forgive.

Being anamorphic has nothing to do with it, actually, as that's just the process of using all of the sensor/film's surface to record the image, even if its source and destination are a different shape.

Right. And the only masking typically done on an IMAX screen is the upper corners which are left dark if they are flattening an OMNIMAX movie to fit the flat screen (did anybody else see "A Freedom to Move" at Cedar Point, with all those bent horizontal lines?)

Anamorphic process is just a matter of distorting the image in only one dimension (horizontally) so that you can fit a widescreen image onto a standard frame of film. Somehow the term got adopted for video because DVD resolution is 720x480 pixels, which is wider than 4:3 and narrower than 16:9.

The dirty little secret is that widescreen movies are shot in all kinds of aspect ratios, none of which happen to be 16:9. the 16:9 (1.78) ratio we see in new widescreen TV sets was chosen arbitrarily, as it is wider than flat 35mm or NTSC video (1.33), wider than 'standard' Panavision (1.39), and narrower than CinemaScope (1.85); certainly a lot narrower than Cinerama (2.59). And you have to love the Academy's use of prime numbers for aspect ratios. :)

Anyway, the fact remains...IMAX screens are not widescreen, and the IMAX format is not anamorphic.

--Dave Althoff, Jr.

OK, my explanation was referencing the difference in the IMAX scenes on the Dark Knight that was mentioned in the post before mine.

I completely understand that IMAX is 4:3, and that anamorphic has nothing to do with it, even though I was trying to say that most people refer to things that are shot in 2.40:1 as "anamorphic.

As I said, I'm having a day - my grandmother passed at about 1:40 today so my head's a bit cloudy in putting together coherent sentences.

I'm sorry to hear that, Josh. My condolences.