Samsung Luring Buyers of Curved Ultra HD TVs With $299 Worth of Content

Samsung’s limited-time promotion giving buyers of its HU9000 series curved Ultra HD TVs five free 4K movies and three documentaries isn’t sitting well with customers who bought the TVs before the deal took effect, at least one AV specialty retailer told Consumer Electronics Daily. Samsung dealer Robert Zohn, owner of Value Electronics, Scarsdale, N.Y., told us the deal was supposed to “go back 30 days” before to the April 27 effective date,” but customers who bought the HU9000 prior to Sunday were denied the hard disk bundle when they tried to register for it at the Samsung website.

According to terms and conditions listed at Samsung’s website, the mail-in offer promo is good only for UN55HU9000, UN65HU9000 and UN78HU9000 TVs bought between April 27 and June 30, 2014. Samsung reportedly is making the deal available to consumers who bought the TV up to 30 days before the effective April 27 date, but the company didn’t immediately confirm details.

Samsung’s promotion includes a free 1 TB USB hard disk pre-loaded with World War Z, X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Night at the Museum and GI Joe: Retaliation, Samsung said. Documentaries include The Last Reef, Grand Canyon Adventure and Cappadocia. The video package is also available as a separate retail purchase for $299, the company said. The titles are available as a result of Samsung’s partnerships with Fox and Paramount Pictures, a Samsung spokesman told us.

Zohn, who’s pleased with the promotion, thinks the deal drove six Samsung TV sales at his shop over the weekend, he said. “The freebie was important because people want to see Ultra HD content,” Zohn said. While the store has impressive demo content -- due largely to a Samsung in-set Ultra HD demo mode “that looks beautiful on the wall and stands out from the other TVs” -- customers “want to start enjoying” 4K content at home, he said. Samsung also cut the price of the TVs by $500, bringing the tags to $3,499 for the 55-inch model and $4,499 for the 65-inch model. Having the five free movies -- “and good movies, too” -- and three documentaries is “equally as important as the $500 discount,” he said.

Ultra HD content has helped Value Electronics sell more Sony TVs, because of the pre-loaded Sony Ultra HD media server, which Zohn said can be used only with Sony TVs without elaborate workarounds that some customers have done. Similarly, Samsung’s Ultra HD drive will work only on Samsung-branded TVs, he said. Sony’s upcoming 60 frames-per-second media server to replace the 30 frames-per-second model could be putting pressure on Samsung, sources said, because content is critical to selling the nascent format. “In the short term, Samsung will be trumped by Sony’s server in content,” Zohn said.

Overall, Ultra HD sales are starting to pick up at Value Electronics, whose customer base has a high proportion of early adopters, due to lower prices, content promos and because “the new products look beautiful this year,” Zohn said.

David Berman, operations manager at Stereo East, Frisco, Texas, said both the pricing and content initiatives on the HU9000 line were important for Samsung this year. “They needed to do it,” he said, citing “a lack of success with 4K” in 2013. Samsung wants to “assert some dominance in the category, and right now they are far from that,” Berman said. Calling Samsung a “wannabe 4K player,” Berman said the content promotion is a way for the No. 1 TV brand to stand out in 4K. He said no one has established a strong foothold in 4K, “but if anybody has, Sony has done it better than anyone.” Most companies are hedging bets on 4K because of Sony’s advantage with its built-in content library, he said. The Samsung video promotion “may be a way to put that fear to rest,” he said.