Raising the bar for cinema innovation, Samsung unveiled its latest model of Onyx (ICD) in March. The next generation of cinematic experiences will be defined by immersive visuals, improved comfort, and a reliable viewing experience.

In this article, Samsung Newsroom takes a closer look at the company’s vision for the future of cinema in terms of Visuals, Space and Consistency.

▲ Samsung Onyx was the center of attention at the company’s booth at CinemaCon 2025, the industry’s largest exhibition

Visuals – An Out-of-This-World Screen Experience

Immersion is at the heart of the cinematic experience — a setting designed to transport audiences into the world of the film. Only in an environment free from the everyday distractions such as constant calls, notifications and household chores can viewers fully engage with the story unfolding on the screen.

A true cinematic experience faithfully delivers the filmmaker’s vision, presenting every detail, color and shadow exactly as intended. Onyx brings that vision to reality.

▲ Pixar’s Inside Out 2 shown on Samsung Onyx, demonstrating the display’s peak brightness and vibrant color accuracy

Onyx, Samsung’s first cinema LED display certified[1] by Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI), delivers superior picture quality in 4K HDR resolution with vivid colors, deep blacks and infinite contrast. The clarity, precision and rich detail in each frame help give life to the narrative. Gone are the days of poor edge resolution and inconsistent brightness.

▲ Samsung Onyx enhances Pixar’s Lightyear (top) and Soul (bottom) with outstanding contrast, making dark scenes more vivid and immersive

The Onyx screen can lend its brightness and clarity to applications other than movie screenings – live sports, concerts, gaming events and corporate presentations, for example. The ability to host alternative content empowers theaters to diversify their offerings and create new revenue streams without compromising the premium viewing experience.

▲ A live concert seen on Onyx, demonstrating the display’s color accuracy and sharp details

Space – More Room for Comfort and Flexibility

Comfort and spatial design are also key factors that set premium cinemas apart. Much like the distinction between economy and business class on an airplane, the seating experience can make or break a theater’s appeal. As theaters evolve into premium auditoriums, spacious, comfortable seating becomes essential.

Onyx helps enable this transformation. Unlike traditional projectors which require separate projection rooms and large setups, Onyx’s cinema LED technology maximizes the available space in a theater. This allows cinemas to optimize their auditorium spaces and provides more flexibility to install specialized seating like larger recliners or dining tables.

Furthermore, new Onyx (ICD) offers flexible scaling options, allowing screens to be customized to fit the dimension of each auditorium, maximizing space efficiency without compromising picture quality and comfort.

▲ Pixar’s Elio screened on Samsung Onyx featuring luxury seating for a premium cinema experience

With Onyx, every seat in the theater offers a reliable high-quality visual experience – no edge distortion or resolution loss – ensuring that the entire audience is fully immersed in the story. The combination of optimized space, enhanced comfort, and stunning visuals elevates the overall cinema experience.

▲ Samsung Onyx empowers theaters to deliver a premium cinema experience and luxury dining for customers

Consistency – Reliable Viewing Quality with Smarter Management Tools

We go to the theater to be transported—to lose ourselves in the world of a story. But experiences in traditional projection-based theaters can deteriorate with picture quality that varies depending on the age and condition of the equipment.

Samsung’s Cinema LED screen, on the other hand, features an ‘Auto Calibration Solution’ that automatically adjusts color consistency across each module, maintaining optimal picture quality—not just at installation, but every step of the way through ongoing maintenance.

Onyx introduction of Samsung’s first 10-year warranty for cinema LED[2], raising the bar for long-term reliability in cinema technology.

▲ Samsung Onyx, an out-of-this-world cinema LED display

Since debuting Samsung’s first Cinema LED screen in 2017, Onyx has built strong partnerships with major global film studios, earning trust and recognition across the industry. As the leader in Cinema LED technology, Samsung is committed to pushing boundaries—so the magic of the movies is always seen exactly as it was meant to be.

With Samsung Onyx, the future of premium cinema is brighter, clearer, and more immersive than ever before.

To learn more, please visit: https://www.samsung.com/my/business/

[1] Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI) is a consortium of major film studios established to define specifications for an open architecture in digital cinema systems.

[2] Based on internal research and publicly available information. Onyx includes a standard three-year warranty, with options to extend coverage up to 10 years.

Through this partnership, Samsung will supply its state-of-the-art display technology, The Wall, to CJ ENM’s virtual studio, a part of its television and film production studio complex scheduled to open in Paju, Korea later this year. The custom virtual production volume studio will be the first in the world to leverage The Wall’s boundless LED technology, unlocking new possibilities for video content production operations and virtual production solutions. The main display will be installed in an oval shape with a diameter of 20 meters and a height of seven meters or more, creating a seemingly endless backdrop to capture content.

“We are excited to collaborate with CJ ENM to build a virtual production studio featuring Samsung’s most cutting-edge display technologies,” said Jong-hee Han, President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “With this partnership, Samsung is launching a new virtual production industry initiative with a commitment to deliver innovative products and solutions that offer the optimal environment for next-generation content production.”

This virtual production studio will use LED displays and connected cameras to create virtual settings in real-time. This solution will save time and reduce image compositing and on-location production costs while helping filmmakers to see the camera on the live-action set in any direction.

The Wall’s modular technology allows creators to design environments to their specific requirements, enabling a variety of installation options such as ceiling installation and convex or concave design, depending on the internal studio design.

The 2021 model of The Wall (Model Name: IWA) with Micro LED technology enhances visual expression with ultra-deep blacks and wide viewing angles, giving filmmakers and content creators the ultimate canvas to fulfill their visions. The modular screens are ideal for studios thanks to their precise color expression, HDR10+ and cinema LED picture quality technology and optimized frame rates for production houses. A new molding process is also applied to the modular surfaces of The Wall to minimize any moiré patterns from forming, a nuisance typically associated with filming standard LED screens.

The Wall’s massive screen measures over 1,000 inches, producing vibrant colors and details supporting up to 16K high-resolution¹ content. Dedicated frame rates for studio production, a new addition to this year’s model, allows producers to run content at frame rates such as 23.976, 29.97 and 59.94Hz, ensuring seamless videos sync with the most widely used camera framerates. Frame Rate Sync technology further reduces screen disruptions for true-to-life accuracy. With thoughtful dust and contamination-resistant LED protective films, plus a variety of easy-to-use solutions, such as remote management and color adjustment, The Wall is built for convenient management in any environment.

CJ ENM Virtual Studio Concept Visual

Both companies expect this collaboration to improve content production possibilities while satisfying a variety of customers by reimagining content production for today’s fast-paced entertainment environment.

“The strategic partnership with Samsung will allow CJ ENM to push forward the creation of a new powerhouse of the next-generation content,” said Ho-sung Kang, CJ ENM CEO. “While CJ ENM is investing $4.4 billion over the next five years in entertainment content, we are taking the lead in building a global No. 1 production studio to become a world leading entertainment company.”

About CJ ENM
CJ ENM is Asia’s leading entertainment and lifestyle company headquartered in Seoul, Korea. Since 1995, the company has engaged in a wide array of businesses across the industry spectrum including media content, music, film, performing arts, and animation, providing its top notch original content to various media platforms. CJ ENM has created, produced and distributed globally acclaimed contents including Cannes-winning film Parasite, Tony Award-winning musical Kinky Boots, record-breaking Korean box office hits Roaring Currents, Extreme Job, Ode to My Father, along with sought-after television series such as Crash Landing On You, Mr. Sunshine, Guardian: The Lonely and Great God, Grandpas over Flowers, I Can See Your Voice and more. To offer the best K-Culture experiences worldwide, CJ ENM presents KCON/KCON:TACT, the world’s largest K-culture convention & festival celebrating Hallyu and Mnet Asian Music Awards (MAMA), Asia’s biggest music awards. With regional offices in Asia, Europe and the U.S., CJ ENM currently employs over 3,600 people.

¹ 16K resolution is only available for horizontal layouts with a 15,360 x 2,160-pixel arrangement.

Now, with increasing interest in the technology from movie experts and enthusiasts, Samsung has announced the launch of Samsung Onyx Cinema LED, a comprehensive cinema screen and sound solution for movie theaters.

Inspired by the gemstone of the same name, the Samsung Onyx brand is an allusion to the Cinema LED screen’s true black colors, offering the audience a detail-rich and vivid cinema experience.  Samsung Onyx invites movie-goers to experience a next-level viewing environment with the comprehensive solutions, Onyx VIEW, Onyx 3D and Onyx SOUND. As Samsung Onyx is unaffected by ambient light, Onyx VIEW upholds consistent and distortion-free picture quality that keeps audiences engaged and furthers realism. Featuring high brightness and picture quality, Onyx 3D takes realism to the screen and offers an immersive 3D experience. With support from JBL by Harman Professional’s sculpted surround sound system, Onyx SOUND expands the audio sweet spot within a given theater. When combined with Samsung’s proprietary technology, the result is sound optimized and perfectly-tuned to fit LED screen.

Check out the infographic below for more details on the industry-first cinematic experience.

Samsung Cinema LED Screen has been acclaimed for overcoming the limitations of existing film projectors in theaters. Viewers have praised the screen for making them feel as if they are watching a 3D film, with its crystal-clear 4K (4,096 x 2,160) resolution picture quality, infinite ‘true black’ HDR, and non-distorted visual imagery.

In less than a year, Samsung turned the viewers’ ‘feeling’ of watching a 3D film into a reality. The true 3D technology was incorporated into the Cinema LED Screen, which gives the ultimate 3- dimensional experience by utilizing the brightness and quality of Cinema LED as it is. Samsung Newsroom met with Dongsoo Koo, from Samsung Visual Display Division’s Enterprise Product Planning Group, who participated in the whole process of bringing the 3D Cinema LED into the world.

Long History of 3D Films that Began from the ‘Binocular Disparity’

“It is the movie ‘Avatar,’ the box office hit of 2009, that usually comes into people’s minds when thinking of 3D movies. However, 3D technology already existed in the 1890s. In fact, it was in 1832 when the physicist Charles Wheatstone first discovered the principle of 3D, which makes it a more than 180-year-old technology. During the 1950s, about 40 3D films were produced in Hollywood.”

The principle of a 3D video is quite simple. There’s a gap between our two eyes, the 65mm disparity between the right and left eye. This ‘binocular disparity’ adds three-dimensional sense to the visual information that our eyes receive. The mechanism of a 3D video is essentially the same. 3D cameras are mounted with two different lenses. For the visual information taken with the two lenses of a 3D camera to be delivered to our two eyes, there should be two screens, too. But since only one screen can be installed, we need a technology to realize 3D video on that screen. Halving the scanline¹ to deliver the video to our two eyes respectively can be one way or making the two videos intersect with each other at an extremely high speed can be another.

Catching Both Birds: Brightness and Resolution

Likewise, there are various ways of realizing 3D on a screen. However, the number one priority in 3D Cinema LED development was that no matter which method is adopted, the best level resolution of Cinema LED Screen should be maintained. This was what kept Samsung up at night.

“The existing 3D cinemas had to compromise between brightness and resolution. The screen is dark as if the viewers are wearing sunglasses in the theater. The brightness is already halved, and with the 3D glasses that audience must wear, it becomes a one-third level compared to other 2D films. The resolution is halved too. It is inevitable as the videos for the left and right eye are overlapped and reflected.”

The evident limitation for existing 3D theater clearly revealed the path for 3D Cinema LED. “The brighter the visual information is, the more our eyes receive the three-dimensional impression. Therefore, we had to develop a new product that delivers the same brightness of Cinema LED, which is 48 nits, even while wearing the 3D glasses. We also could not sacrifice the resolution. It’s clear that lower resolution equals a lower sense of reality.”

It was not an easy goal. But Samsung’s know-how on 3D TV and the knowledge of Cinema LED created the synergy for the company to overcome the limitation on brightness and resolution of the existing 3D movie theaters’. 3D Cinema LED’s full and precise color refuses comparison any premium movie theaters.

Less Dizziness in 3D Film Experience

3D technology makes movies to be more immersive, but it can also cause inconveniences such as dizziness and headaches. The 3D Cinema LED screen has significantly improved dizziness that specifically involves 3D.

There are two reasons for the dizziness. The dizziness from the content itself occurs due to the mismatch between the reality and what our brain recognizes. That is, our body is sitting still but our brain thinks the body is moving. In addition, when we stare at a certain screen for more than two hours in a dark room, it is natural to develop a headache.

However, Koo proudly told that 3D Cinema LED has no degrading of brightness and improves the display-related dizziness by eliminating many of the triggering factors except those coming from the content itself. Therefore, the viewers experience less dizziness. “The left video should be seen only by the left eye and the right video only by the right eye. But there are moments when our eyes receive overlapped imagery. This is called ‘crosstalk,’ and the repetition of crosswalk causes the dizziness and headache. Fortunately, our developers came up with an algorithm for 3D Cinema LED to completely get rid of any crosstalk from happening, therefore dealing with the dizziness and headache issues.”

Less Distortion, No Matter Where You Sit in the Theater

The 3D Cinema LED has the same viewing angle as the Cinema LED. The 3D Cinema LED provides the opportunity to enjoy the film with less distortion no matter where the viewer is seated, just like the Cinema LED did. “When watching in the conventional 3D theater, the image becomes darker or distorted as people go to the edge of the theater, but 3D Cinema LED has significantly improved the problem.”

For theaters to be a space that continuously delivers new experiences, the 3D Cinema LED is expected to play a bigger role. “People say ‘Seeing is Believing.’ One might not believe until seeing something, but once seeing it, there’s no denial. I think this applies to 3D Cinema LED, too. Before experiencing it, some might doubt whether there is an actual difference. But once they experience the new technology of ours, people will believe and understand that it is totally different. This year’s ISE will be the first moment of that unique experience,” said Koo, adding that soon people will be able to enjoy the ultimate 3-dimensional experience through 3D Cinema LED Screen.

While nothing can compare to actually being there, this video captured the 3D cinema LED screen over 3D glasses. The film is a trailer for “Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets”.

¹ a line or a row of pixels from a television screen