The first Hollywood movies graded in HDR come to Samsung SUHD TVs equipped with a UHD Video Pack. M-Go will provide the downloads.

High dynamic range (HDR) is one of the latest technologies to come to consumer TVs. HDR promises a greater range of tones between the deepest shadows and the brightest highlights—resulting in more realistic images with a greater sense of depth. The catch is that requires content graded in HDR and a display that can show it.

Fox Home Entertainment has released four movie titles in HDR through the M-Go cloud-based movie service—Exodus: Gods and Kings, Kingsman: The Secret Service, Life of Pi, and The Maze Runner. More films will follow; Fox has promised to make all its future film releases available in HDR, as well as some previous releases. But these four films are the first HDR movies that TV viewers can get their hands on.

Currently, there is no universal standard for consumer HDR. The upcoming Ultra HD Blu-ray format supports HDR, and there is an effort to create an industry standard by the UHD Alliance, of which Samsung is a founding member. However, there are competing HDR formats. One example is Dolby Vision, which works with Vizio's Reference Series UHDTVs and debuts on Vudu this fall. The four Fox films only http://www.avsforum.com/forum/# play
on Samsung 2015 SUHD TVs and some 2014 UHD models with the SEK3500 One Connect Box upgrade. Notably, cloud-based delivery lets content providers offer content in a variety of formats, so the fact that there's more than one flavor of HDR may not result in an all-out format war reminiscent of HD DVD versus Blu-ray.

Owners of a compatible TV equipped with a Samsung UHD Video Pack (essentially a 500 GB external hard drive) can download the new
HDR titles through M-Go. According to AVS member ray0414, Exodus is about 100 GB, which will take quite a long time to download unless you have really fast broadband.

I saw clips from Life of Pi and Exodus playing on Samsung SUHD TVs at CES as well as at an event in NYC, and both times I strongly preferred the HDR experience. It's exciting to see this technology roll out so soon after its announcement, even if it is currently early-adopter territory. Nevertheless, four titles are better than none, even if they only play on pricey flagship-class TVs. I predict it won’t be long before there are more movies in HDR than in 3D, and the technology will quickly trickle down to relatively affordable UHDTVs.

If you have a Samsung SUHD TV and watch any or all of these movies, let me know what you think. I'm a bit jealous of the first home viewers to see Kingsman: The Secret Service in HDR—that movie already looks amazing on good old Blu-ray, but I'd love to see an even better rendition.

In other words, I can't wait to get my hands on an HDR-capable TV. How about you?