HDTVs Left Behind in Samsung’s 4K Push

Samsung really wants you to buy a UHD TV — which has four times as many pixels as HD — because that's where the money is. UHD sets account for 60 percent of Samsung's TV revenue, Lee said, even though they are a small fraction of the total number of TVs sold.

Samsung is also happy to sell you an HDTV, though. "As long as there is a need for that technology…we're going to address that market demand," Lee said. Don't expect Samsung's HDTVs to be cutting edge, though. "Are we going to continue to pile resources and R&D [into HDTV]?" Lee asked. "It's going to go into this," he said, pointing to Samsung's flagship JS9500 curved Ultra HD TV, which starts at $6,499 for a 65-inch screen.

However, with just a trickle of 4K content available, TV makers need another enticement. New technologies also include a wider color palette using so-called nanocrystals, which produce more saturated primary colors for making up an image. (Hence Samsung introducing its new TVs at the Rainbow Room.) Samsung brands its UHD televisions with all the tech accouterments as SUHD.

An organization called the UHD Alliance -- which includes Samsung, most other major TV makers such as Sharp and Sony, and content providers such as Technicolor, Netflix and 20th Century Fox -- is developing new standards for video that uses the wider, more lifelike colors and higher contrast that new TVs from Samsung and others can produce.

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