Onyx is Samsung's cinema screen, not a virtual-production wall

The stage

Samsung's Onyx is a cinema auditorium LED screen, sold and supported separately from The Wall for Virtual Production line covered elsewhere in this guide. Samsung's current Onyx page, retrieved 16 September 2026, describes it as 'the world's first cinema LED display' and states it is 'DCI Certified,' marketed for both feature-film screening and, as the page puts it, 'non-movie events from concerts to gaming.' The Onyx brand itself was formally launched at CinemaCon 2018: a Samsung newsroom release dated 25 April 2018 states the 4K Onyx model was validated as 'the world's first Digital Cinema Initiatives (DCI)-certified theater display,' available in widths from 5 to 10.3 metres, with HARMAN International-built surround sound integrated into each screen.

What the documents establish

The 2018 release documents the branding launch and the DCI-certification claim as Samsung's own statement, naming partners including exhibitor Pacific Theatres, content firm Ymagis/Eclair, and camera and lighting manufacturer ARRI for content-development work, without publishing an independent verification of the certification beyond naming the certifying body. The current product page, largely unchanged in its core claims since that launch, establishes that Onyx remains a distinct product line years later rather than a discontinued one-off, but it is a living document dated only by its retrieval and should not be read as describing 2018-era hardware unmodified.

The department view

Onyx is built for exhibition, not production: it is installed facing an audience in a fixed auditorium, calibrated for direct viewing rather than for a camera moving through a set, and its DCI certification concerns projector-replacement standards for theatrical presentation rather than any in-camera visual-effects requirement. A production researching LED volumes should not assume Onyx's specifications, brightness or otherwise, describe camera-facing performance; that is a different product line with different vendor claims, covered separately in this guide.

What to check before you build

This is an editorial checklist relevant mainly to exhibitors rather than production crews. A cinema evaluating Onyx should confirm which generation of the product a quote describes, since Samsung has continued to announce new Onyx models at industry events well after the 2018 launch, and should verify DCI certification status directly with the certifying body rather than relying on a vendor's own page.

• Which Onyx generation or model year is being quoted, given Samsung's continued updates to the line since 2018?
• Has DCI certification for the specific model been verified independently of Samsung's own marketing claim?
• Is a production research team confusing Onyx's exhibition-facing specifications with Samsung's separate virtual-production display line?

Samsung's own materials date Onyx's brand launch precisely, to CinemaCon 2018, and keep it clearly separated from the company's virtual-production line; the two should not be conflated even though both are Samsung MicroLED products described in similar marketing language.