Japanese Imax Projector To Become An "Artifact"

The Tokyo Adachi Children Science Museum has decided to buy an Imax movie projector and sound system that it had leased from the giant-screen company even though it has no further use for the equipment, the Yomiuri Shimbun reported today (Friday). The newspaper said that the Imax Dome Theater had been a money-loser for the museum, falling far short of covering the annual rental fees to Imax. Thus, when its ten-year lease expired this year, it had intended to ship the equipment back to Canada and install conventional projectors. However, the costs of shipping the equipment would have amounted to 80 million yen ($115,000) while buying it will cost 24 million yen ($34,000). The newspaper commented that the projector "will stay put as a costly, but useless, artifact."