Samsung TV Buyers To Get Free Hollywood HDR Movies

However impressive Samsung’s new SUHD TVs may be, their key ground-breaking compatibility with the new high dynamic range (HDR) picture format has so far been hamstrung by a complete lack of native HDR content for consumers to watch.

Nobody has been feeling more aware of this problem, it seems, than Samsung itself. For with Netflix , Amazon and UHD Blu-ray’s HDR promises still seemingly many months from coming to fruition, Samsung has taken it on itself to roll out - as early as June - the world’s very first readily available HDR material, as part of a new UHD Video Pack.

What’s more, Samsung assures me that the HDR content contained on the UHD Video Pack won’t just be a handful of short demo clips. Rather it will comprise two full-length, high-profile Hollywood movies, offered at a native UHD resolution.

Samsung won’t yet confirm the titles of these two films, but since the brand has used HDR UHD transfers of Exodus: Gods And Kings and Life Of Pi extensively in demonstrations of its SUHD TVs, it’s hard not to think that these will turn out to be the movies in question. At the very least I’d expect the two films to be Fox titles, given Samsung’s proven relationship with the studio.

Samsung has also confirmed to me that the two HDR movie transfers will be accompanied on the new UHD Video Pack by other non-HDR UHD movies. Again Samsung won’t yet reveal what these films will be, but there will be as many as five (exact number depending on territory).

The 2014 Samsung UHD Video Pack was initially offered free as a promotion when you bought a Samsung UHD TV, before later being made available to buy separately for around $300. And it seems likely from my discussions with Samsung that a similar distribution model will apply to the new HDR-toting Video Pack. The new UHD Video Pack will also, like its predecessor, only work with Samsung-branded TVs.

For those of you not familiar with last year’s Samsung UHD Video Pack, it was a USB hard drive filled with UHD content Samsung put together in response to the same sort of native UHD content shortage that now plagues HDR. Depending on your territory, the first pack's UHD films included G.I. Joe: Retaliation, World War Z, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Night At The Museum, The Counselor and Life Of Pi.

For more details on why you should care about HDR, check out the Forbes reviews of the world’s first HDR-capable TVs: The Samsung UN65JS9000 and Samsung UN65JS9500.