The screen is where the gap between home and theater gets made or lost.
At CinemaCon 2026 in Las Vegas, Samsung pulled back the curtain on a screen that most people will never see in their living rooms — and that's precisely the point. The company announced a new 14-meter-wide (46 feet) addition to its Onyx cinema LED lineup, a format built for the kind of premium large-format auditoriums that theaters are betting their futures on. The announcement came at Caesars Palace, where the industry gathers every April to argue about what moviegoing should look like next.
The 14-meter model is the third rung in a ladder Samsung has been building for a few years now. The 5-meter version arrived first, aimed at boutique screening rooms. The 10-meter followed for mid-sized premium houses. Now the 14-meter steps in for the big halls — and it doesn't stop there. Through a modular cabinet system, the screen can be expanded sideways and downward to reach 20 meters, or roughly 66 feet across, more than doubling the total screen area without, Samsung says, any loss in image quality.
The technical specifications are worth sitting with for a moment. The 14-meter Onyx runs at up to 4K resolution and 120 frames per second, uses a 3mm pixel pitch tuned specifically for the larger format, and achieves peak brightness of 300 nits — about six times what conventional digital cinema projection standards call for. It supports both the wide scope ratio (2.39:1) and the slightly boxier flat ratio (1.85:1), and carries DCI certification, a credential that matters to studios and exhibitors alike because it means the image meets the specifications that major studios have agreed upon for theatrical presentation. The contrast ratio is listed as infinite, which in practice means the screen can render true black rather than the dark gray that projection systems produce when the lamp is still running.
Hyoung Jae Kim, Samsung's Executive Vice President for Visual Display, framed the product in terms that exhibitors have been using for years: the home theater has gotten very good, and the cinema has to offer something it cannot replicate. His argument is that the screen itself is where that gap gets made or lost.
The Onyx platform has been accumulating real-world installations since its debut in 2017, and Samsung pointed to two recent ones as evidence of momentum. In Rabat, Morocco, the Pathé Dar Essalam complex opened with all four of its auditoriums equipped with Onyx displays — a mix of 10-meter, 5-meter, and scaled 6.4-meter configurations, totaling 12 Onyx screens. Four of those are the latest ICD-generation units. The result, Samsung notes, is that Pathé now operates more Onyx screens than any other cinema company in Europe.
Closer to home, Trilith Cinemas in Fayetteville, Georgia became the first American theater to install the latest Onyx generation, doing so across five auditoriums in December 2025. Trilith sits inside one of the country's more unusual production ecosystems — a studio community where films are made and then, in this case, screened on the same technology used to evaluate them during post-production. Bo Chambliss, President of Georgia Theatre Company, described the pairing as a natural fit, emphasizing that Onyx's color accuracy and reliability allow the theater to present films the way their makers intended.
Beyond feature films, Samsung is also pitching the Onyx platform for live sports broadcasts, concerts, gaming events, and corporate presentations — content categories that have become increasingly important to exhibitors looking to fill seats on non-Friday nights. Unlike projection, LED screens don't dim with age or vary in brightness depending on where you're sitting, which makes them more predictable for event-style programming.
CinemaCon runs through April 16, and Samsung's booth in the Roman Ballroom at Caesars Palace includes not just the new Onyx display but also a glasses-free 3D spatial signage unit and a 115-inch digital signage screen. The trade show is the largest annual gathering in the theatrical exhibition industry, and the timing of this announcement — at the start of the summer movie season's run-up — is not accidental. The question the industry is quietly asking is how quickly LED replaces projection as the default for premium auditoriums. Samsung's expanding size range suggests it intends to be the answer.
Notable Quotes
People go to premium theaters for something they cannot recreate at home. Samsung's new 14-meter Onyx gives exhibitors a way to bring the premium experience to larger auditoriums, helping turn moviegoing into a destination again.— Hyoung Jae Kim, Executive Vice President, Visual Display Business, Samsung Electronics
Onyx sets a new standard for image performance while remaining true to the filmmaker's intent, and its reliability allows us to deliver a consistently premium experience — a natural fit for a location so closely connected to the creative community.— Bo Chambliss, President, Georgia Theatre Company
The Hearth Conversation Another angle on the story
Why does the screen width matter so much? Isn't the image quality the real story?
Width is what determines whether a large auditorium feels immersive or just big. A 10-meter screen in a hall built for 14 meters leaves dead space and breaks the spell.
What's the significance of the modular expansion to 20 meters?
It means a theater doesn't have to commit to a fixed size at installation. They can start at 14 meters and grow the screen as the auditorium evolves or as demand justifies the investment.
Six times brighter than conventional projection — does that actually matter to a viewer?
It matters most in the dark scenes, paradoxically. More headroom at the top of the brightness range means more nuance at the bottom. You see detail in shadows that projection simply washes out.
The Pathé installation in Morocco feels like an unusual flagship. Why Rabat?
Luxury cinema is growing in markets where the middle class is expanding and the multiplex model hasn't fully calcified yet. Rabat is a signal that this technology isn't just for Los Angeles or London.
What does it mean that Trilith is both a production hub and a cinema?
It closes a loop that's usually invisible. The people who made the film can watch it on the same class of display used to check their work. That's a different kind of quality control.
Is Samsung positioning this against IMAX, or is it a different conversation?
It's a different conversation for now. IMAX owns a brand. Samsung is selling infrastructure. But as more exhibitors install LED, the distinction between a branded premium format and a technology platform starts to blur.
What's the risk for theaters that invest in this?
The same risk as any capital-intensive bet on a format shift. If audiences don't pay a premium for LED over projection, the math gets hard. So far, the early adopters seem to be betting they will.