Samsung has installed the first LED movie screen in North America at the Pacific Theatres Winnetka in Chatsworth. Revolutionary in and of itself, if could revolutionize the exhibition business if it takes off among theater operators.
The solid, black, almost 33.8 ft. wide, 17.7 ft. high screen — the middle of three sizes that will eventually be available to exhibitors under the Samsung Onyx brand — is illuminated by nearly 9 million pixels. It offers true dark blacks, borderline-blinding whites and super-bright ranges of all the colors in between, not to mention the most realistic skin tones you may ever have seen in a theater.
“We have a million-to-one contrast ratio, we have revolutionary true blacks and we have unparalleled dynamic range,” Nick Conti, Samsung Electronics America’s senior business development manager for cinema, said during an Onyx demonstration at the Winnetka Theatre Friday.
“We really looked at redesigning how to do this audio system,” added Daniel Saenz, Harman Professional’s cinema solutions manager. “When you start thinking about LED screens, you realize that, compared to traditional cinema, you cannot have the speakers directly behind the screen. That’s just not possible here [since Onyx is made of solid materials, while most movie screens have lots of tiny holes for sound to come through]. So we moved [our] channels above the screen, and we implemented some special EQ that Samsung was working on. There’s a lot of innovation in that . . . for high output and clarity.”
Comments(0)