Every year there’s a new home cinema technology looking for your attention. IMAX Enhanced is not a new format, but if you’re after a premium home cinema experience, it’s one to take a closer look at.
IMAX Enhanced launched in 2018 as a partnership between cinema giant IMAX and audio specialist DTS. The goal was to deliver IMAX’s signature picture, scale and sound to the home in 4K HDR.
We’ll explain what it is, what devices you need and where you can get IMAX Enhanced content.
What is IMAX Enhanced?
IMAX Enhanced is a certification programme to ensure the highest quality playback in the home with regards to resolution, colour, brightness, contrast and sound.
The standard can be broken down into its three components: picture, sound and scale.
The first relates to IMAX’s Digital Media Remastering technology or DMR. According to IMAX, this can accurately reduce noise and grain under the filmmaker’s guidance to optimise content for “higher-quality, higher-brightness” 4K HDR displays.
Without this treatment, IMAX believes that HDR content could look worse than intended. IMAX Enhanced also supports HDR10+ with some titles.
The sound portion is delivered through DTS. It uses a variant of the immersive DTS:X audio format to recreate the IMAX experience with deeper bass and wider dynamic range than is typical for a living room environment.
Scale refers to IMAX Enhanced titles that were shot with IMAX-certified cameras or specially formatted for its 1.44:1 or 1.9:1 aspect ratio. This enables viewers to see IMAX content filling out all four frames of the display.
Who supports IMAX Enhanced?
Several content providers, TV manufacturers and AV brands have signed up to IMAX Enhanced. It’s not as many as other formats, but IMAX Enhanced is positioned as a premium format.
With compatible devices, you shouldn’t need to press a button or select a mode either. IMAX Enhanced content should automatically play when a TV or soundbar detects the IMAX Enhanced signal.
In terms of IMAX Enhanced displays, there are TVs from Sony, Hisense, TCL and Philips. For speakers and subwoofers there’s JBL, Definitive Technology and Philips, while for projectors and AV receivers there’s Arcam, Sony, Denon, Marantz, Onkyo, Pioneer, Anthem, Lexicon, McIntosh among others.
Compatible TVs can also have an IMAX Mode that you manually select (Sony’s Pictures Core streaming service supports IMAX, too), while some AV receivers are able to flag IMAX content and display the format.
To get the impact of IMAX Enhanced content, you needn’t buy the full complement of supported products. Devices can be bought individually, so if you’ve got an IMAX Enhanced soundbar but not a TV, it’ll wring a better performance from the audio.
But to quote IMAX, “when playing back IMAX Enhanced streaming content on both certified display and audio devices, the sum of the whole is greater than its parts – creating the most premium in-home entertainment experience anywhere.”
In 2026, Sony Pictures has plans to expand its catalogue of IMAX Enhanced titles, which will be made available through AVOD (advertising video on-demand) services on specific Toshiba and Hisense TVs in the UK and German.
What set-up is recommended for IMAX Enhanced?
The minimum speaker layout for the standard is a 5.1.4 system. That’s five speakers (in the horizontal plane), one subwoofer and four height speakers. DTS recommends a 7.2.4 system – seven speakers, two subwoofers and four heights – as the most optimal set-up.
If you don’t have that set-up or indeed the space for it, DTS:X is very flexible as its decoder can remap the soundstage to match the speakers you have at your disposal. Speakers should have a frequency response of 20Hz to 20kHz, with a sensitivity of 89dB. Subwoofers should be able to go down as far as 20Hz and hit 115dB peaks.
When it comes to TVs there aren’t specific guidelines, but it’s more than likely you’ll need a high-end TV capable of a good HDR performance.
When it comes to 4K Blu-ray players there’s no official certification required. It only needs to pass the 4K HDR picture and DTS:X soundtrack on to a compatible device.
And if you don’t have IMAX Enhanced gear or aren’t interested, content will still play on your devices in its normal form. It’s only when there’s an IMAX Enhanced compatible device in play that the device will deliver the optimised presentation.
Where can I get IMAX Enhanced content?
Compared to Dolby Vision, there’s not as much content available. Big titles so far include Jumanji: The Next Level, Spider-Man: Far From Home, Zombieland: Double Tap and Bad Boys For Life.
Don’t expect IMAX Enhanced content to be the sole preserve of 4K Blu-rays either. If you can’t find the IMAX logo on your physical 4K copy, it’s likely because the digital version is the ‘enhanced’ version. In fact, streaming is where you’ll start to find the bulk of IMAX Enhanced titles.
Sony and Paramount have put their weight behind the format, the former with its Pictures Core service and the latter offering several titles on streaming sites such as Bumblebee, Crawl and Rocketman.
Rakuten TV’s streaming service supports IMAX Enhanced content in Europe, but for the time being there’s not a huge amount of content available. And there’s also Disney+, which added IMAX Enhanced titles in 2021, although these appear to play with Dolby audio and not DTS sound mixes.
Is IMAX Enhanced worth it?
To be honest, we’re not sure as we’ve not had many opportunities to test it, which speaks to the way the ecosystem has developed.
In our view, IMAX Enhanced needs to make content more accessible, and get more manufacturers onboard before it can be thought of as a true rival in the home cinema space to Dolby Vision + Atmos
