The BigScreen Cinema Guide:News & Events

Hillside Cinema Dolby Digital Installation a Marcus Theaters First

Source: Matt Rockwell, Projectionist, Hillside Cinema, 414-646-7302

Hillside Cinema, Delafield, WI, is the first theater of the Marcus Theater Chain to host a Dolby Digital digital sound installation. The theater, located near the intersection of Hwy 83 and I-94, has a total of 8 screens.

Dolby Digital is a sound format that contains six individual channels of high-quality sound for excellent sound reproduction in the theater. The most noticable feature of Dolby Digital, or any of the digital sound formats, is that the surround speakers are split between right and left channels. This allows the theater-goer to hear different sound information from behind them from both the right and left sides. Competing digital sound formats to Dolby Digital are DTS by Digital Theater Systems and SDDS by Sony Corp.

Digital sound is not new to Hillside Cinema, DTS digital sound was installed in two of the screens when the theater was constructed last year. Unfortunately, in order to make room for the Dolby digital installation, one of the DTS digital installations was removed.

Hillside Cinema joins Hartford Theaters, which previous to this announcement, was the only theater in Wisconsin to boast a Dolby Digital installation. A third Dolby Digital installation will appear in the new Value Cinemas-Brookfield. For more information on the new Value Cinemas, please refer to that PCG article, also listed under the News & Events heading.

You can count on the Penguin Cinema Guide to showcase each Dolby Digital presentation at Hillside Cinema, along with every other movie presented in a digital sound format, in the Digital Showcase section of this publication.

Theater #1 contains a Digital Theater Systems 6 channel decoder (DTS-6) producing digital sound output
Theater #8 contains a Dolby Systems Specteral Digital 6 channel decoder (SRD - Dolby Digital)

All of the following stats are the same for both houses:

Dolby Sound Processor (Dolby A or SR decoding)

3 QSC 1400 amps driving 300w high and 300w low each to the
left, center, and right channels behind the screen

2 QSC 1700 amps - 1 running 500w x 2 to the surround L+R channels
   1 bridged to 1000w for the subs behind the screen.

All EV speakers and crossovers  throughout.  All speakers behind
the screen inset into a ceiling to floor, wall to wall sound wall
about an inch behind the screen.

4 surround speakers to a side, and 4 sub cases behind the screen.
Mezzanine booth with center projection.