Jong-Hee (JH) Han was promoted to Vice Chairman and CEO, and will lead the newly merged SET Division as he continues to head the Visual Display Business. President Kyehyun Kyung was also named CEO and will lead the DS Division.

• JH Han is a leading expert in TV research and development and has played a major role in the Company achieving the top position in global TV sales for the 15th consecutive year. He is expected to strengthen the synergies among the different businesses in the SET Division and help drive new businesses and technologies.
• Kyehyun Kyung, who has been the CEO of Samsung Electro-Mechanics, is an expert in semiconductor design, having previously been the head of Samsung Electronics’ Flash Product & Technology Team as well as part of the DRAM Design Team. He is expected to help maintain the Company’s semiconductor leadership and lead innovation in the components business.

Other promotions and changes in today’s announcement include:

• Yongin Park, named President and Head of System LSI Business; previously Executive Vice President and Head of System LSI Sales & Marketing
• Hark Kyu Park, named President and Chief Financial Officer; previously President and Head of the Corporate Management Office, DS Division
• Kinam Kim, named Chairman of Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology; previously Vice Chairman and head of the DS Division
• KS Choi, named President and Head of North America Office for SET Division; previously Executive Vice President and Head of North America Office
• Inyup Kang, named President and Head of North America Office for DS Division; previously President and Head of System LSI Business

Samsung Electronics, the global TV industry leader, is elevating its presence at IFA 2016 with a special exhibition designed by a team of rising German artists. The installation, entitled The Origin of Quantum Dot, showcases the beauty of Samsung’s SUHD TVs with Quantum dot display, while incorporating video, lighting and musical elements.

The Origin of Quantum Dot is a stained glass-inspired art installation designed by Andreas Nicolas Fischer, Schnellebuntebilder, Christopher M. Bauder and Kling klang klong. The artists came together from different creative backgrounds – including sound, media art and sculpture – to build the unique work of art. The piece contains 45 SUHD TVs and 9,000 shards of stained glass.

“We designed The Origin of Quantum Dot exhibition, the largest we’ve ever produced, so that visitors at IFA can directly experience the visual excellence of the premium SUHD TV with Quantum dot display,” said HS Kim, President of the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “We are proud to have partnered with such talented, local artists to bring this visual concept to life.”

Samsung’s IFA Exhibition to Highlight Innovative Home Entertainment Features

The Rethink Zone, which is located in the center of the Samsung booth at IFA, introduces innovative products with convenient, functional features to make day-to-day life easier for consumers. Additionally, the zone will highlight how these products have impacted the home entertainment and appliance industries. Visitors will have an opportunity to learn more about Samsung’s SUHD TV with Quantum dot, the Serif TV and more.

At the Quantum dot Experience Zone, which is located at the entrance of the Samsung booth at IFA, visitors are invited to learn more about the past, present and future of Quantum dot. This will include more information on its durability, size and material, and color efficiency, as well as its future uses. Visitors will also be greeted by 45 SUHD TV models, ranging from 65- to 78-inches in size, as part of The Origin of Quantum Dot art installation.

In the Smart TV Zone, visitors can preview TV PLUS, the Video-on-Demand service scheduled for release in the United States during the fourth quarter, and Europe in 2017. Samsung previously launched TV PLUS in Thailand, Vietnam and Korea.

In addition to TV PLUS, several of Samsung’s content partners, including 20th Century Fox, Warner Brothers, Amazon and Netflix, will introduce their HDR and UHD services. Various games that can be played without a console will be introduced as well. Gamefly, a streaming game service, is launching new games dedicated for Samsung Smart TVs every month, and at the upcoming IFA, visitors will be able to enjoy 2K’s Borderlands and Bioshock at the site.

The AV Zone will feature a complete 4K entertainment experience, equipped with Samsung SUHD TVs, Ultra HD Blu-ray player (UBD-K8500) and the HW-K950 Soundbar featuring Dolby Atmos^® technology. Visitors will have the opportunity to experience cinematic experience and harmony of Samsung’s 4K home entertainment devices.

“As display technology and innovation through light emission has progressed over the last century, the utilization of Quantum dot technology has signaled a new era in TV history,” said Kim.

The earliest principles of Quantum dot technology can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when stained glass windows were sought after for the way they emitted color through natural light. In the 1980s, Quantum dots were first discovered as display materials, utilizing ultra-fine semi-conductive particles 20,000 times smaller than a strand of human hair to emit different colors through light.

Quantum dots express a wider range of colors simply by varying the size of the particles. This allows Samsung’s line of SUHD TVs with Quantum dot display to produce the most lifelike colors yet with a durable foundation that maintains the brightness and color of the displays.

Samsung Electronics’ booth will be open at Level 2 of CityCube Berlin from September 2 through 7 for IFA 2016.

Members of the Interaction Group at Visual Display (Samsung) and TEEM

Among the many SDKs, projects, and chips, one of the things that stood out was the Dreem Project (No, that’s not a typo; there are two e’s). Produced in collaboration between Samsung’s Interaction Group and TEEM, DreemGL is an opensource framework that helps developers build a room-scale, high-performance graphics experience. What does that mean? Well…

Frameworks Help Developers Simplify the Process of Composing Apps

Frameworks provide developers with support programs, compilers, code libraries, tools, etc. For example, if you want to make a switch to turn on a certain function within an app, you can refer to the code library and use previously set components instead of having to design and code the same structure over and over again.

A good framework can help dramatically boost the volume and quality of apps available in the market by enabling and encouraging developers to code more efficiently. There are many different frameworks for all kinds of platforms and devices when it comes to features and functions for the native environment (within the app, that is).

But the requirements change with the changing times. More and more apps now run across several screens and devices; and with the IoT era around the corner, the need for cross-device connectivity is growing. Another increasingly important factor is how to visualize the massive datasets coming from this network of devices and services in a way that satisfies users’ demand for rich graphical output. That’s where DreemGL comes in to play.

Beyond Mirroring – Multiple Screens, Users, and Roles

While most multi-screen solutions currently focus on mirroring – sharing content on one device to another – the future pushes for more than that. Instead of a simple host-client relationship, future services will involve multiple users on multiple screens, each playing a different role.

For example, say you want to play Texas Holdem across several screens, you could have the chips and community cards on the TV while each player has his/her hand on their private smartphones and tablets.

MusicSquare is another good example of how newer services may work: One TV is connected to multiple phones and tablets, allowing each user to assume the DJ role. Each connected user can provide feedback on the music and ultimately collectively create a whole new music experience.

MusicSquare was built using Dreem

These are dynamic environments involving many additional components including multiple devices, roles and customized UI design for each device. Dreem is meant to enable developers to describe such room-scale experiences all from a single source file. Thanks to DreemGL’s unique architecture you can manipulate the source code easily without disrupting the structure with a visual data flow editor. Once developers build a complex user scenario with DreemGL, they can easily change the flow of events with this visual editor or repurpose the same interaction pattern to interact with different types of data sets easily.

Prototyping for GPU-Accelerated Multi-Screen Experiences

Another aspect to take into consideration is that the UI on each screen is evolving to take advantage of faster Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) capabilities. Dreem is built to enable teams of designers and developers to collaborate on real, functional prototypes that explore not only multi-screen user experiences, but also the power of GPU-accelerated graphical UIs. Currently, to implement high-performance graphic UIs, developers need to work with OpenGL Shader Language (GLSL), a specialized complex language. With this low-level programming method, it is very difficult to build graphic experience that responses to lots of data coming from the network of devices and services. Dreem’s architectural breakthrough is that it lets developers to write Shader effect – a complex pixel-level graphical expression – with Javascript, a much approachable scripting language. The Dreem team thinks that this will lower the barrier for many developers to build high-quality graphic visualization projects.

Connecting Designers and Developers with Tools Like Flowgraph and Graphy

There are many different groups of people involved when developing apps and services; like planners, designers, developers, etc. Often times it is a challenge to get everyone to understand what’s going on. The features they need often differ as well. Dreem takes each of these players into consideration and aims to help better facilitate communication.

Flowgraph visualizes the connection between data and events

Flowgraph visualizes the connections between data and events, helping designers, developers and planners better span out their ideas. These connections can be changed on the spot. Graphy reflects the changes UX designers make in the code in real time, so developers don’t need to re-code everything all over.

Graphy allows designers to directly influence the code with its GUI tool

In building and supporting an open-source development framework for GPU-accelerated multi-screen prototyping, Samsung hopes to invite more creativity from across the developer community while preparing them for the upcoming requirements for cross-device, multi-screen, multi-user services as well as the hyper connected IoT.

Hungry for more? Below is a recorded session straight from SDC 2016, featuring the masters; Jinha Lee and Rik Arends:

Dreem project is an on-going effort rather than a finished stable framework. For more information on the project, visit: https://dreemproject.org/.

It is a term often used to describe the televisions built by Samsung’s Visual Display (VD) Business, but it also applies to the lives of its engineers — it’s an immersive experience.

If you’re an engineer at Samsung’s VD Business, when you go to a movie with your family, you don’t just watch the film — you watch the screen. In a movie that takes place in outer space, how do the stars and the moon pop out in the darkness of the galaxy? How rich and true-to-life are the colors in scenes that take place in a vibrant, bustling market? More than that, you may go to see the same movie at different theaters to compare different types of projectors.

This is the life of Samsung engineer Simon Lee, who says his frequent tinkering and experimenting with the picture settings on the family’s home TV does not go unnoticed by his wife and kids. Lee is part of a team of engineers who have devoted their careers to creating a TV picture quality that is as close to reality as possible. “Sometimes I can’t help but continue my job when I’m at home,” says Lee, who, like most people who are passionate about their jobs, cannot always turn off his fascination and curiosity when it comes to his work. “Sometimes I get really good feedback from my wife and kids, who might see things differently,” he says with a laugh. Being a Samsung engineer also means never being satisfied. In a highly competitive industry, the technology is always evolving.

This year’s line of SUHD TVs are equipped with the most advanced picture that Samsung has ever developed, with Nano Crystal technology for a wider gamut of colors, and High Dynamic Range (HDR) for advanced brightness and contrast. When Samsung adopted Nano Crystal technology for its latest line of televisions, it was something akin to giving an artist a larger, more robust color palette to work with. The result is a more vibrant viewing experience for consumers. But beyond just improved color range, the SUHD TV has 2.5 times better brightness due to HDR. The SUHD Remastering Engine is a proprietary technology that displays content the way filmmakers intended. Add to that a superior panel, a new BLU algorithm and remarkable color detail, and it is clear that Samsung has created a truly groundbreaking, in-home cinematic experience. The SUHD TV’s image processing technology allows the content to adequately utilize the expression capabilities of the display and produces stunning detail with rich and accurate color remapping.

“In 2002, the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology started working on the development of Nano Crystal technology,” says engineer KyeHoon Lee. “In 2010, Samsung decided to apply the technology to a premium consumer device. In 2012, the company finished the development of the technology, but we reconsidered the usage of Cadmium because we found that there was a movement to tighten environmental regulations for electronic devices. Though Cadmium was not on the list of prohibited materials for electronic devices at that time and it might not be added to the list for several years, we decided to drop the use of the material and started developing a replacement material.” Lee adds that, in reaction to these environmental concerns, Samsung decided to phase out the material immediately, even though the European Commission granted a grace period before it was prohibited.

In all, it took 14 years to develop Nano Crystal technology, and about 150 critical patents were secured along the way. Samsung engineers knew that these Nano-scale crystals, which emit different colors when illuminated, were the key to incredibly rich and accurate colors, but they are also very vulnerable to oxygen, water and heat. The team struggled to find a solution, with some believing that the only environment suited for such a process was outer space. It took more than two years to figure out how to envelop and protect the Nano crystals, which are hundreds of thousands times smaller than the width of a human hair, while not compromising picture quality. Samsung engineers had to produce a film of very precise thickness as part of a very difficult coating process.

“It requires a very thin layer that covers the core material,” says Samsung engineer KyeHoon Lee. “In order to apply Nano Crystal technology to display products, this protective material needs to be produced as a large film that is the size of a TV. And the thickness of this film has to be accurate to within one-fiftieth the width of a human hair.”

Also, since Cadmium, which was an integral part of transferring blue light to pure color, was facing restrictions, Samsung’s engineers had to go back to the beginning and try to find a solution that was both environmentally friendly but still produced the remarkable color gamut. In the end, Samsung engineers were able to develop an environmentally friendly solution. This was all about providing value to consumers while also taking an industry-leading position on Cadmium-free products and environmentally friendly practices.

With HDR, Samsung engineers have created a TV that is exceptionally bright—up to 1,000 nits. This is believed to be optimal for delivering the best picture quality in the home. However, the reason HDR is able to deliver a stunning visual display is due to its contrast. HDR is what allows the stars and the moon in space to shine remarkably bright in the complete darkness of space, or for a lighting strike to seem almost real. This is due to brightness data, calculation data and backlight control of content, which allows SUHD to overcome brightness expression limits and can display all types of light, such as radiant sunlight or sparkling stars in the night sky.

The level of brightness is vital for good picture quality, and the SUHD TV’s range of brightness expression is 2.5 times better than conventional UHD TV models. This allows clearer expressions of scenes like dazzling sunlight, spots on the moon and starry night skies.

Collaborations with film and television studios such as FOX were also critical to the development of SUHD TV. Until now, there was very little content being produced for television that could truly take advantage of SUHD TV technology.

Samsung engineer Kilsoo Park says, “Previously, directors and producers used regular TVs for mastering their work in the filmmaking process. Now, they are using our SUHD TV, which gives them more options for color and brightness. This way, their creative intention is expressed more accurately when viewers watch at home. And if producers create films with the capabilities of SUHD in mind, knowing that a TV exists that can truly convey the visual aesthetic they are looking for, we will technically be affecting the ‘sources’ of content, as well. And this is what makes Samsung different from other companies.” To deliver truly innovative picture quality, device and content technologies need to be developed as well. Samsung has invested in developing the full UHD ecosystem through the UHD Alliance.

For the teams of engineers in the Visual Display Business, SUHD is the result of years in the laboratory as well as countless hours spent watching television screens, scrutinizing pictures and taking optical measurements using the most high-tech equipment to perfect the product. But, such is the nature of the television industry — there is no time to stop and celebrate.

“In reality, there are always new goals and projects coming in,” said engineer SeHyeok Park. “So there really isn’t any time to celebrate each achievement. Also, we aim to challenge relentlessly and always try to stay prepared for the next one. So, rather than being content for the present, our company focuses on moving towards the future.”

According to Kilsoo Park, the multitude of teams that worked on the SUHD TV were always united by putting the needs of the consumer first. “When we need to make decisions, we agree to stand by the consumer’s perspective and make the right decisions for them. For example, we consider what value can be brought to consumers. When a product is created solely from an engineer’s viewpoint, consumers might find it difficult to relate to the product. This common philosophy is what allows teams working separately to work out.”

The Samsung SUHD picture quality could only come to fruition through the dedication and teamwork of the company’s engineers, as well as the partnerships formed with content producers. It’s all part of an effort to make a picture quality that comes ever closer to reality.