At this year’s CinemaCon, an annual gathering where film studios show off their upcoming wares to excite the exhibitors they hope to showcase them, Disney announced a new way to see a movie, sort of: InfinityVision. Despite the cutesy Marvelized name, it’s not a superhero-specific experience; it’s a certification for premium large-format (PLF) auditoriums. The idea is that any InfinityVision-certified screen will adhere to or exceed standards – vaguely described so far – in size, sound quality, and picture brightness/clarity. There are supposedly 300 such screens already certified around the globe, though there doesn’t seem to be an actual list explaining which ones they are yet.

The practical reason for this additional layer of branding is that Disney’s Avengers: Doomsday is premiering in December on the same weekend as the third Dune movie, which has a deal to occupy coveted (and limited) Imax screens for several weeks. This essentially locks Earth’s mightiest heroes out of one of the marquee names in exhibition; InfinityVision seems intended to reassure viewers that their other options, presumably the various Dolby, RPX, and other branded PLF auditoriums that already exist, are as impressive as possible. Call it screenmaxxing.

Screenmaxxing is big business for an imperiled theatrical exhibition industry. As much as many moviegoers complain about ticket prices or boast about the superiority of their home-theater set-ups, PLF screens seem to be an effective way to lure them out of the house, and charge a little (or a lot) extra for the assurance that they’re seeing a version of the movie that goes above and beyond what they’d get from a well-appointed flatscreen TV. Technically speaking, even the dinkiest screens at the multiplex will be vastly larger than the TV sets owned by 95% of the population. But theaters can’t justify a $5 surcharge on the basis of a bigger-than-your-TV certification; they need something bigger and better.

This has led to a wealth of PLF options, especially in areas with multiple competing chains, which in turn can feature multiple formats within the same facility. For movies like Sinners or Project Hail Mary, the wealth of options can be part of the event-movie sell; Sinners director Ryan Coogler does a better job than I could breaking down the various formats and aspect ratios of his recent Oscar-winning blockbuster, and Project Hail Mary followed suit. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another even brought back the rarely used VistaVision format, an analog version of high-definition that was dormant for half a century, to the point where The Brutalist was shot in the format but not actually able to be projected that way. (One Battle eked out a few locations projected on VistaVision, in addition to traditional 70mm and 70mm Imax prints.)

That list of options will only grow; another new brand of digital projector has been slowly rolling out across the country, designed to compete with Dolby auditoriums. HDR by Barco promises deep blacks, high levels of contrast, and unprecedented brightness, and has the commitment of the dine-in-movie Alamo Drafthouse chain. These newly Barco-equipped auditoriums also tend to utilize Dolby Atmos sound, which is not to be confused with Dolby projection, which is also not to be confused with the Alamo’s separate Big Show-branded auditoriums (which feature Dolby Atmos sound and especially large screens), which is not to be confused with Imax, which … well, actually, at some point, they probably are to be confused.

So how does HDR by Barco compare with other premium options? I ventured to the Brooklyn location of the Alamo Drafthouse to find out. The Brooklyn Drafthouse is one of three locations in New York City using HDR by Barco projectors; the other two are at Regal Cinemas outposts in Manhattan and Brooklyn, where the projects have been installed in the chain’s branded PLM screens, called the RPX. (See? Confusing.) The main HDR by Barco attraction of the past few weeks has been The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, but that animated adventure would be rainbow-hued even in subpar projection, so I went the other way and caught an HDR by Barco showing of Lee Cronin’s The Mummy, where deep blacks, high-visibility contrast, and enhanced color could make a real difference in a shadowy, often gunk-hued horror movie.

Compared with the Dolby projection of The Mummy, which I saw at a press screening two days earlier, the HDR by Barco projection does deliver an extra visual bump, albeit not one I’d necessarily expect casual viewers to notice. Scenes that standard-or-worse projection might have rendered muddy or indistinct were highly legible, even when the movie purposefully obscures images in shadow or distorts them using extreme closeups and split-diopter shots (which render parts of the foreground and background clear and the rest of the image intentionally blurred). During one close-up, I could clearly see the merest wisps of gray within star Jack Reynor’s close-cropped hair. It was, indeed, like the Dolby presentation but a bit brighter, which is essentially the layman’s version of what the tech is promising. And it didn’t, to my eyes, distort the picture in the manner of a poorly calibrated motion-smoothed TV on display at Best Buy – an unlikely outcome for supposed theatrical projection experts, but never out of the question as executives fiddle with new tech. Now that the new corporate ownership of the Alamo has institute a phones-only food-ordering policy for a chain that used to pride itself on a phone-free experience – something the unionized New York workers had to step in and attempt to stop – nothing seems off the table. But despite the irritation of phone flashlights occasionally streaking through my field of vision, the actual Barco projection at the Alamo looked good. It looked much better than my HDR TV, of course, and better than a lot of other big screens. It wasn’t a conversion experience, but it’s a high-tier big-city auditorium.

The broader question is whether another brand of brightness – another way of charging consumers for what they might reasonably expect to be a baseline standard for theatrical standard – stands a chance of being added to moviegoers’ mental rolodex of PLF options (if they have one at all), let alone help save exhibition. Moviegoers don’t have to ask for HDR by Barco by name for it to be successful; the mere fact of healthy competition in the field of laser projection could help ensure that audiences won’t settle for dim big-screen images, and seek out PLFs when possible. Then again, a lot of big movies themselves lean into the need for the projectors to do more of the work. Lee Cronin’s The Mummy uses its dark tones purposefully, and the Barco projector brings out that sense of contrast. But take another look at the beloved climax of Avengers: Endgame. You can InfinityVision it all you want, but it’s still drab, washed-out CG-battle imagery taking place on a nondescript post-apocalyptic parking area. That obviously had little to no effect on the film’s record-breaking box office.

Perception, however, of an upgraded big-screen experience can be just as important as the experience itself. For both, the most effective display of showmanship that theaters could make at this point would be to construct more genuine Imax screens. Not the retrofitted auditoriums that convert a multiplex’s largest screen via new Imax sound and projection systems, but new ones that can show Dune 3 or Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey – movies that have sold out months-ahead showtimes in this format – in their expanded aspect ratios. (Maybe there could even be room to let the Avengers in, on a trial basis.) This isn’t just Imax brand loyalty; the original Imax constructions are unlike any other, emphasizing height rather than width (Again, that Ryan Coogler video does a nice job explaining the particulars). Not every movie is a fit for that distinctive shape – but a proper Imax screen, like the one at New York’s AMC Lincoln Square, is still so massive that even traditionally shot movies look great on it.

Unfortunately, there are only a few dozen such venues globally; the vast majority of Imax screens are, like Dolby or HDR by Barco auditoriums, mostly just using particular high-quality equipment. It’s much easier to modify an existing auditorium, swap out some projectors, or shrug off the use of phones in a famously anti-phone venue, all to create a path of least resistance even as theaters claim to be pursuing an experience unlike any other. Audiences seek that path, too, whenever they convince themselves that streaming Lifetime movies on Netflix is basically as immersive as going out to a theater. Screenmaxxing is always going to be a niche interest, one that it’s probably not realistic to base all-new construction projects on. But as much fun as it can be to hunt for the biggest, loudest, sharpest presentation, at some point there will be a too-vasty array of options implying that a regular movie theater just isn’t good enough – a very different, and potentially destructive form of InfinityVision.