Samsung has announced that its advanced Onyx LED cinema screens will come to more cinemas, with a European launch slated for the near future, with a collaboration with one of the biggest animation studios in the world.
These screens – available in 5, 10, 14 and 20-metre sizes – are alternatives to projectors and offer a range of AV benefits, including 4K HDR and up to 120Hz frame rate support.
Samsung claims that these are also the world's first DCI-certified (Digital Cinema Initiatives) LED cinema displays, meaning they meet the approved resolution, colour space, frame rate, brightness and contrast metrics, alongside other crucial picture aspects.
Furthermore, the Onyx display can reportedly reach a peak brightness of 300 nits, compared to the typical 48-nit peak brightness of regular cinema projectors, or 75-nit average peak brightness found on IMAX projectors.
They're already available in a handful of theatres in North America, and the screens were notably fitted into the historic Pathé Palace Theatre in Paris.
However, this announcement from CineEurope 2025, which is being held in Barcelona, confirms that these screens will officially launch on a wider scale across Europe.
And that's not all; Samsung has also announced that it will strengthen its existing partnership with Pixar, with the studio's upcoming animated feature, Elio, ready to be exhibited in 4K HDR on the Samsung Onyx cinema display.
Looking forward, Pixar will continue to master its films in DCI HDR, with the studio reportedly planning to install Onyx displays at its California campus for pre-production evaluations, as well as demonstration screenings for filmmakers.
We've been vocal about our dissatisfaction with the picture and sound performance at most cinemas we frequent, especially while TV technology continues to advance.
Samsung's answer seems sensible, as it could bring many aspects we look for in the best TVs to much bigger and more cinematic environments.
Our TV and AV editor, Tom Parsons, has seen Samsung's Onyx display in action and claims that the experience ruined his local cinema.
Watching a clip of Inside Out 2 (another Pixar feature) mastered in 300-nits, at The Culver Theater in California, he stated that "the image leaps from the screen with gleaming highlights and awesomely punchy colours, and everything is underpinned by those super-solid blacks".
We're looking forward to seeing these screens come to more auditoriums in Europe, and we hope that they will unify cinema and home cinema experiences.
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