Disney announces its own answer to IMAX, and it comes with a major advantage

IMAX has long been the ruling standard when it comes to premium big-screen viewing experiences, but Disney is about to shake up the scene with its own answer, and it's calling in The Avengers to help launch it.

It's called Infinity Vision – like Avengers: Infinity War or Buzz Lightyear's famous catchphrase "To infinity, and beyond!" – and it basically works as a certification for premium large format (PLF) theatres to ensure audiences are getting the "biggest, brightest, and most immersive cinematic experiences".

Disney has provided three fairly vague credentials for what a cinema needs to provide to qualify as an Infinity Vision theatre: "The largest screens for maximum scale"; "laser projection for superior brightness and clarity", and "premium audio formats for fully immersive sound".

While there has been no mention of any specific screen sizes, HDR formats or even Dolby Atmos audio, we presume that these will play a role somewhere, considering that superior brightness and immersive sound formats are distinctly mentioned.

There are also questions as to whether or not this will translate into Disney's home entertainment releases; will we see Infinity Vision support for Disney+ in the future?

While Disney's certification is new, it turns out that hundreds of theatres worldwide already possess the necessary equipment to show supported titles in Infinity Vision. The House of Mouse claims that there are around 375 PLF theatres around the world that, in theory, can already support Infinity Vision.

That might not sound like a lot, but it's a solid foundation for Disney to build upon, although it has some catching up to do with the roughly 1700 IMAX-capable auditoriums worldwide.

As such, Disney is calling in the big guns to help launch its new cinematic format. The 2019 blockbuster Avengers: Endgame will be re-released in cinemas this September in Infinity Vision, as will the latest entry in the franchise, Avengers: Doomsday, when it premieres this December.

Interestingly, this announcement comes after Disney lost out on securing IMAX screens to Warner Bros' Dune: Part Three, which releases on the same day as Avengers: Doomsday.

Regardless, a new premium cinema format coming from the biggest film studio in the world is cause for excitement, especially if you're a Marvel fan.

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