Jul 27 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.
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Today's Show:
News:
- Samsung plans release of Bixby smart speaker
- Survey: Four smart home leaders emerge
- Netgear offering smart doorbell
- Vizio’s 2018 flagship P-Series Quantum TV is now available for $2,099.99
- Samsung says it will release a consumer Micro-LED TV in 2019
Other:
- The Monoprice Monolith 15″ Ported THX-Ultra Certified Subwoofer is a super solid performer that delivers lots of tight bass per buck.
- SVS 16-Ultra Subwoofer Reviews and Awards
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.
Reader Comments (3)
I recently saw Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol at home. I thought it was so good, a revival for the series, that I want to see Fallout in the theater before MoviePass, which I joined only two months ago, goes belly up.
Correction: The movie I saw recently was Rogue Nation. IMO, much better than Ghost Protocol.
Hi.
In episode 854 You talk about the cinema experience and how to improve it. Well, just yesterday I went to my local cinema to see the incredibles, and the experience was thoroughly ruined by the vast amount of advertising (must have been at least half an hour, not including the trailers) that they shoved down my throat. As long as that doesn't change, they will have problems filling their seats.