Imperial has the largest single screen in Northern Europe with 1002 seats. It is among the best cinemas in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

and is usually the go-to place for cinephiles in the Danish capital. Imperial is owned by

Nordisk Film Nordisk Film A/S (lit. "Nordic Film") is a Danish entertainment company established in 1906 in Copenhagen by filmmaker Ole Olsen. It is the fourth-oldest film studio in the world behind the Gaumont Film Company, Pathé, and Titanus ...

and is located near Vesterport railway station. It has undergone several renewals, the latest of which were completed in September 2013 when

Dolby Atmos Dolby Atmos is a surround sound technology developed by Dolby Laboratories. It expands on existing surround sound systems by adding height channels, allowing sounds to be interpreted as three-dimensional objects with neither horizontal, nor verti ...

was installed. It is one of the only big cinemas in Copenhagen which can still project

70 mm film 70 mm film (or 65 mm film) is a wide high-resolution film gauge for motion picture photography, with a negative area nearly 3.5 times as large as the standard 35 mm motion picture film format. As used in cameras, the film is wid ...

, as well as the only one which can project 4K in 3D.

Renewals

The cinema has undergone several renewals over the years. Among the biggest can be mentioned the change from 1521 to 1179 seats in 1988, with the number of seats being further reduced in 1998 in order to pass the

THX THX Ltd. is an American company that develops the eponymous high fidelity audio/visual reproduction standards for movie theaters, screening rooms, home theaters, computer speakers, gaming consoles, car audio systems, and video games. Founded ...

-certification. The current projector is Barco's premium model, the DP4K-32B, which was installed in February 2012. This allowed Imperial to project 4K imagery in 3D as the first cinema in Denmark. The latest renewal took place in September 2013 when a new borderless, 40% bigger screen was installed, along with Dolby Atmos and new seats. The number of rows was also reduced from 24 to 21, and the total number of seats went down to 1002.

Technical details

Picture

The main workhorse is the Barco DP4K-32B which was installed in 2012. In order to continue to support the projection of legacy films, as well as newer movies which are not distributed digitally, Imperial still has one of the two

Philips Koninklijke Philips N.V. (), commonly shortened to Philips, is a Dutch multinational conglomerate corporation that was founded in Eindhoven in 1891. Since 1997, it has been mostly headquartered in Amsterdam, though the Benelux headquarters i ...

EL4001 DP70's, which were first installed back when it first opened in 1957. The screen itself is 18,4 x 7,7 m, in the Todd-AO format. It is slightly curved and among the absolutely biggest screens in Denmark.

Sound

Imperial was

-certified in 1998. The quality of the sound is reaffirmed twice every year by THX-technicians. Due to the hall's special fan-like shape, Imperial has had many problems with the surround sound system. In certain places in the hall, the sound coming from the side speakers can appear to radiate from the corners of the room instead of the sides.

Sources

Biobookings side med information om hvilke film der går

Alt om Københavns side

Nordisk Film

Artikel om teknikken i Imperial og Palads

Artikel om installationen af den digitale projektor

{{Copenhagen cinemas Cinemas in Copenhagen