Podcast #854: Samsung's 34-foot Onyx LED TV

Last month we read a news story about the bid by Samsung to replace projectors in movie theaters. Now Digital Trends has an article that provides a few more details about this technology. Our hope is that it can find it's way into our living rooms in the not too distant future.   Named after the jet-black jewel, Onyx is a giant, 34-foot screen that uses LEDs to display perfect black levels, intense brightness, and brilliant color for unprecedented cinematic contrast. It's 10 times brighter than even the best laser projectors out there now. But a stunning picture is not it's only advantage. There is the space savings of not requiring a projector room which in turns allows for better seat configuration. There is no sweet spot so that every seat in the house will have the best picture. There are also some drawbacks. The screen is no longer acoustically transparent and a new technology developed by Samsung's JBL Professional is required to overcome this.  If a pixel goes bad you have to replace an entire panel since the screen is actually the screen is made up of many panels stitched together. Onyx uses individual LEDs for each pixel and thus can mimic OLED and Plasma. This is what gets you those deep blacks. Because the screen is so large you can't see the pixels sitting at a normal movie theater distance. This technology won't work at home because the viewing distance is too close which is why Samsung is working on MicroLED technology.   DCI Specifications Seeing the writing on the wall the Digital Cinema Initiatives released a memorandum regarding direct view displays. Here are some highlights: Pixel Count - The sampling structure of the displayed picture (pixel count) shall be at least 4096 (4K) horizontal and  2160 vertical pixels. Pixel Visibility - The pixel structure should not be visible from a 1.0 screen height viewing distance. The pixel pitch should be uniform across a screen, including at module boundaries. 10 foot high screen then at 10 feet you should not be able to see the pixels. Luminance Uniformity - DCI's  intent is  to require that  the display shall  not exhibit any perceptible  inconsistency in luminance levels between pixels when viewed from any seat in the theater. There are requirements for Color Gamut, Color Accuracy, and Color Uniformity as well as black level and gray scale. Suffice it to say the DCI wants you to ensure that when you watch a movie on a direct view system that it be as good or better than what you see on the best projectors today.