Cinemark announced Friday that they have completed the conversion of one of the auditoriums at the Century San Francisco Centre in San Francisco, California to their new XD large format.

Moviegoers will be greeted with a large wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-floor screen (of unspecified size), plush seats, and a JBL sound system that has more than 30 speakers. Digital Cinema Projection is being handled by a 30,000 lumen Barco projector with a Doremi server. The new auditorium is also capable of 3D presentations using RealD technology.

"The Cinemark XD experience is very popular with our customers in Dallas and Salt Lake City, where the new technology debuted," comments Alan Stock, Cinemark's Chief Executive Officer. "We are very excited to offer this new extreme digital experience to our guests in San Francisco. The Cinemark XD auditorium offers an environment that engages all of your senses and pulls you into the movie. We exhibit the newest movies every week, including Real D-3D pictures."

According to the press release, two other Bay Area movie theaters will be getting the XD treatment as well. The Century 20 Daly City and Century Union City 25 will be debuting their XD auditoriums in November.

Large-screen installations like these are becoming more popular as audiences are seeing the value in the bigger-screen experience, which IMAX used to have wrapped up but has been diluting at the same time it has grown in the number of movies shown in IMAX theaters. The benefit to these non-IMAX screens is that they can show any movie while IMAX screens are limited to what's available from IMAX at the time. Since the resolution of digital projectors in each are the same, the projected image is most likely going to be the same quality.

Source: Cinemark Press Release