Disney+ has brought us plenty of content to enjoy this weekend. One cool feature has just arrived that will give you an IMAX-like experience in the comfort of your own home. You can enjoy some of your favorite movies in IMAX Enhanced through the streaming service.
What Is the IMAX Enhanced Product All About?
With IMAX Enhanced, streaming and technology advances that used to be limited to the theater come to your home. The IMAX Enhanced product offers “the most immersive viewing experience outside of a theatre.”
In totality, IMAX Enhanced offers a viewing experience that looks and sounds just like it would in the theater. It includes ultra-vivid 4K HDR picture remastered so it looks exactly how the filmmaker intended. Also, the IMAX Enhanced sound experience can offer deeper bass and more dynamic range, with supported equipment.
A growing collection of IMAX releases are already available using IMAX Enhanced, and now Disney+ has begun offering the product on its own platform.
What Does This Mean for Disney+ Content?
Select films from the Marvel Cinematic Universe feature IMAX Enhanced on Disney+ supported devices. Currently, the only feature supported in IMAX Enhanced is the expanded aspect ratio. You’ll be able to view supported movies in a 1.9:1 aspect ratio.
This allows you to see up to 26% more of the original image than before, right from home. According to Disney, some movies only have select sequences filmed in this expanded aspect ratio. For the rest, the picture will be wide but not take up the full height of your screen.
Disney+ provides IMAX Enhanced on “supported devices.” On a Mac, this means Safari 11 or higher, Chrome 75 or newer, or Firefox version 68 or higher. You can also use the latest version of the Disney+ app on your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad to enjoy the expanded aspect ratio. It’ll work on your Apple TV 4th generation or later, too.
Find the full list of supported devices here.
What Content Provides This IMAX-Like Experience?
Looking in the Disney+ catalog, there are other movies that support IMAX Enhanced. Those included as of this writing are:
- Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings
- Black Widow
- Avengers: Infinity War
- Avengers: Endgame
- Captain Marvel
- Ant-Man and the Wasp
- Black Panther
- Thor Ragnarok
- Guardians of the Galaxy
- Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
- Doctor Strange
- Captain America: Civil War
- Ironman
How ironic that “The imax experience” simply means “blacking out less of the screen so that the film better matches the TVs that everyone has.” All this stuff is silly. Just use the screens you have to the best of their ability.