Tomasz Wadowski
Samsung brought not only a booth to Barcelona but also a concrete vision for the future of cinema halls. At CineEurope 2025, the company officially presented a new version of Onyx Cinema LED – a cinema screen that shines on its own instead of using light from a projector. This is not a completely new concept, but only now does the solution have the chance to be more widely adopted in Europe. The question is no longer "does it work," but: "will it catch on?"
Glowing wall vs. classic projector – where's the difference?
Onyx Cinema LED offers a maximum brightness of up to 300 nits, while a typical cinema projector operates at a level of 50-100 nits of reflected light. The difference is colossal – especially in daytime scenes, special effects, or HDR content (which we can agree doesn't make much sense in the world of projectors). Moreover, the LED screen also offers much deeper blacks.
But it's not that projectors are becoming obsolete. They have their advantages: they are primarily cheaper. Onyx, on the other hand, emphasizes sharpness, contrast, and readiness to display 4K at 120 frames per second. This may be useful in the future, but today most films are still made at 24 fps.
HDR in cinema?
The most interesting argument from Samsung is HDR. Thanks to higher brightness, the screen can display content with a greater range of tones – bright elements are not washed out, and dark ones do not blend into gray. So far, most cinemas have not had the technology capable of showing HDR in all its glory. That may change now. But this only works if the film has actually been created with HDR in mind – and there are still not too many of those, at least until now.
Disney Pixar bets on Onyx.
As part of the collaboration with Pixar, the Onyx screen has arrived at the studio in California and will be used in film production – the first title, “Elio,” will debut in 4K HDR on the LED screen. It's hard to find a better recommendation than the fact that creators of such demanding animations have chosen this technology as their reference!
Technology with potential, but also with limitations
Samsung offers Onyx in four sizes (5, 10, 14, and 20 meters), providing some flexibility in room design.
5 meters ≈ 197 inches
10 meters ≈ 394 inches
14 meters ≈ 551 inches
20 meters ≈ 787 inches
The company also tempts with a 10-year warranty, which can be reassuring in the world of expensive investments. But LED still represents a higher entry threshold, both financially and logistically. Calibration – while less dependent on the light source – is still necessary. And the technology itself may seem too “perfect” to some viewers, resembling a television too closely.
How much does such a screen cost?
The Samsung Onyx Cinema LED screen is not a monolithic slab – it consists of smaller LED modules that are assembled like blocks into a larger whole. Each of these modules is approximately 64 × 89 cm in size, and its price starts at $3,300 – and this is more about bulk orders rather than buying a single unit for a living room.
For comparison: a standard 65-inch television (which is about 1.44 meters wide) costs around $1,000. Meanwhile, to create an Onyx screen that is 10 meters wide and with a 21:9 aspect ratio – like in a movie theater – about 80 such modules are needed, which translates to a panel cost of around $264,000. With a 20-meter screen (similar to what you find in IMAX theaters), the number of modules increases exponentially – we are then approaching the $1,000,000 mark.
And that's still just the modules alone. The complete set also includes controllers, power supply, housing, mounting system, cooling system, as well as professional installation and calibration. In short: the price reaches a level that for commercial cinemas could be an investment for years, and for the average user – a curiosity from the future.
The cinema is changing, but projectors won't be thrown in the trash for a long time
Onyx Cinema LED is undoubtedly a revolution in the world of cinema technology—not only in terms of parameters but also in the very philosophy of image display. A glowing screen instead of a projector is a fundamental change. However, as is often the case with revolutions, not every theater and not every operator is ready for it.
So let's not expect that in the near future, in an average Multikino or Cinema City, anyone will start throwing projectors in the trash. But this can't be completely ruled out—because if the industry decides to go for a "premium experience" and technological advantage, then Onyx may be the direction that changes the rules of the game.
For now, it’s a proposal for the few. But perhaps in a few years—it will be the standard for many.
