DETROIT — Charlton Heston says he hates to see epics such as "Ben-Hur" relegated to videotape and television screens.

"Any film originally made for theaters suffers a great deal in the transfer to videotape," he said Monday.

"When someone says, 'Oh, I just got a video of "The Ten Commandments" or of "Ben-Hur," for my birthday,' I have to tell them, 'Sorry, but you haven't seen it.' "

Heston was in Detroit to mark the big-screen reopening of his 1959 movie "Ben-Hur" at the Fox Theater.

"Here (at a theater), the moving-image arts are seen as they are meant to be seen, in all their glory."

Heston, 64, won an Academy Award for his role as Judah Ben-Hur. The film, about Roman rivalries in Jesus' day, is known for an 11-minute chariot race that Heston says remains the greatest action sequence ever filmed.