Samsung strikes exclusive pay-per-view 4K movie and TV streaming deal with M-GO

While 4K/UHD TVs have inundated the tech landscape, the content has been slow to come, causing PR firms for big fish like Samsung and LG to ride out like Paul Revere claiming, “The 4K is coming, the 4K is coming!” However, a new joint venture announced today between Samsung and streaming service M-Go will add a healthy slice of 4K content to the growing pile — if you’re a Samsung 4K/UHD TV owner, that is.

M-Go, a growing VOD (video on demand) service which is partnered with both DreamWorks Animation and Technicolor, has announced a new Samsung-exclusive 4K catalog. The service will start with just a handful of titles, but the company says the library will grow with a new batch of titles each week, ramping up to around 100 movies and TV shows by the end of the year.

According to a report by Variety, M-Go’s new 4K lineup will begin with a handful of movies, including Sin City: A Dame to Kill For, The Giver, Power, Ghost in the Shell and Limitless.

The new 4K content is expected to cost around $1-2 more on average than M-Go’s regular HD titles to rent, and around $3-5 more to buy. M-Go CEO Christophe Louvion called the company’s new library of mostly remastered works a “best-in-class streaming experience for movie buffs and TV lovers.”

M-Go has been working on its new UHD library for some time now. The streaming service got a bump of business when Samsung sold off the assets of its beleaguered media hub, migrating all of its video subscribers to M-Go. When we spoke with Louvion recently, however, he was quick to stress that M-Go’s new UHD library is a result of the company’s own efforts to transfer and master new and classic titles, thanks to exclusive access to source files direct from studios.

Louvion also claims that M-Go’s partnership with Technicolor allows the company to access superior technology for upscaling source files to UHD, as well as optimizing content originally shot in UHD for “televisions like Samsung’s 4K/UHD TV line.”

While M-Go’s new service is restricted to Samsung TVs for now, the catalog will add a major boost to the burgeoning 4K content pool, which includes a large catalog from Sony (also exclusive to its own TV line), as well as modest offerings from Netflix, and a forthcoming batch of 4K titles from Amazon. It’s not much, but it’s a start, and as more studios begin to film and produce content natively in the sparkling resolution, the hope is that the proliferation of content will grow to help bolster the adoption of 4K/UHD hardware.

For now, with access to Netflix, M-Go, and likely Amazon’s new 4K library as well, it pays to be with team Samsung.

Updated 11/13/2004: This report has been updated to include the initial films offered by M-Go’s service, according to Variety.