For a while now, I’ve been talking about two new HDR formats: Dolby Vision 2 and HDR10+ Advanced. The short version is that both are an attempt to solve the deficiencies of the past, while taking advantage of the brighter and overall more powerful TVs being introduced today. In theory, there should be less worry about overly dark scenes, or motion smoothing making a $200 million blockbuster look like it cost $20,000.
Thanks to a contact of mine at Samsung, there’s more to say about HDR10+ Advanced. At long last, you can both buy a TV with the tech and actually find something to watch — although you might still want to wait a few months if you haven’t already tossed in your chips.
HDR10+ Advanced trivia challenge
Test your display knowledge
Think you know your tone mapping from your metadata? Put your HDR10+
Advanced knowledge to the ultimate test.
HDRStandardsTechnologyDisplaysVideo
Which organization developed and oversees the HDR10+ Advanced standard?
Correct! HDR10+ Technologies LLC is the dedicated licensing body that
governs the HDR10+ Advanced standard. It was formed to manage certification, licensing, and promotion of
the format across the industry.
Not quite. While Samsung was instrumental in creating the original
HDR10+ format, the standard is officially managed by HDR10+ Technologies LLC. This organization handles
licensing and certification for all HDR10+ variants.
What is the primary technical advancement that HDR10+ Advanced introduces over
standard HDR10+?
Correct! HDR10+ Advanced uses dynamic metadata that can adjust tone
mapping on a per-frame or scene-by-scene basis. This allows the display to optimize brightness and
contrast far more precisely than static HDR formats.
Not quite. The key advancement in HDR10+ Advanced is its use of dynamic
metadata for per-frame tone mapping. This is what separates it from base HDR10, which uses only static
metadata applied to an entire video.
How does HDR10+ Advanced differ from Dolby Vision in terms of licensing?
Correct! HDR10+ Advanced follows a royalty-free licensing approach,
which is one of its major advantages over Dolby Vision. This lower barrier to entry has encouraged
broader adoption among TV manufacturers and content creators.
Not quite. One of HDR10+ Advanced’s key selling points is its
royalty-free licensing model. Dolby Vision, by contrast, requires manufacturers to pay licensing fees
and use Dolby-approved chipsets, making it more costly to implement.
What is the maximum peak brightness specification supported under the HDR10+
Advanced standard?
Correct! HDR10+ Advanced supports a peak brightness of up to 10,000
nits. While most consumer displays cannot yet reach this level, the specification is future-proofed to
accommodate next-generation display technology.
Not quite. The HDR10+ Advanced specification accommodates peak
brightness levels up to 10,000 nits. This headroom ensures the standard remains relevant as display
panel technology continues to push brightness boundaries.
Which streaming platform was a founding partner in developing the HDR10+ ecosystem
alongside Samsung?
Correct! Amazon Prime Video was a key founding partner alongside Samsung
in developing and promoting the HDR10+ ecosystem. The platform was among the first to stream HDR10+
content to compatible devices.
Not quite. Amazon Prime Video partnered with Samsung to help develop and
launch HDR10+. Netflix has been a strong advocate for Dolby Vision, while Amazon backed HDR10+ as an
open alternative.
HDR10+ Advanced introduced a feature called ‘Bezier curve’ tone mapping. What does
this allow a TV to do?
Correct! The Bezier curve tone mapping in HDR10+ Advanced allows
displays to apply a mathematically smooth and adjustable brightness response curve. This gives TV
manufacturers far more flexibility to optimize how highlights and shadows are rendered.
Not quite. In HDR10+ Advanced, Bezier curve tone mapping refers to a
customizable brightness response curve that shapes how a display handles the full range of luminance. It
gives manufacturers more precision than simpler linear or fixed-point tone mapping methods.
Which color bit depth does the HDR10+ Advanced specification primarily use for its
base video signal?
Correct! Like its predecessors HDR10 and HDR10+, HDR10+ Advanced uses a
10-bit color depth as its base video signal. The ’10’ in the name directly references this
specification, allowing over a billion possible colors.
Not quite. The ’10’ in HDR10+ Advanced refers to its 10-bit color depth.
This delivers over 1,024 shades per color channel — a significant step up from 8-bit SDR content, which
only provides 256 shades per channel.
What type of metadata does HDR10+ Advanced use, and how does it differ from standard
HDR10?
Correct! This is the fundamental difference between the two formats.
HDR10 applies a single set of static metadata to an entire movie, while HDR10+ Advanced uses dynamic
metadata that can change frame by frame for much more precise tone mapping.
Not quite. The core distinction is that HDR10 relies on static metadata
— a single brightness instruction for an entire piece of content — whereas HDR10+ Advanced uses dynamic
metadata that adapts per scene or frame, resulting in a more accurate and vivid picture.
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How and where to watch content in HDR10+ Advanced
Walking a tightrope
The first requirement is one of Samsung’s 2026 Neo QLED, OLED, or MicroRGB TVs, one example being the S95H. This makes sense — although Advanced is a royalty-free standard that anyone can adopt, Samsung is its primary backer and developer. The company depends on all the flavors of HDR10, as it refuses to pay fees for Dolby Vision, even on TVs costing five or six digits.
As of this writing, there’s just one compatible movie: the new Masters of the Universe streaming on Amazon Prime Video. This isn’t a coincidence. Amazon MGM is the movie’s US distributor, and Prime Video was the first service to support the original HDR10+, which rolled out in 2017. If you’ve got a compatible Samsung TV, Advanced should kick in automatically when you choose Filmmaker Mode from your picture options. Make sure your TV is updated to the latest available firmware first.
I’m told that Amazon is working on “backfilling” compatibility for everything on Prime Video, or rather everything available in HDR. There’s no word on how long that will take, but it could be a monumental effort. The company can’t just flip a switch. Individual studios have to remaster their releases with expanded metadata, and some of them may not be in a rush to add Advanced unless Amazon is applying pressure.
As for the world beyond Amazon and Samsung, I’m promised that there will be “more streaming services to come.” That’s likely to be every major platform, given that services like Apple TV, Netflix, Disney+, Paramount+, and even YouTube already support HDR10+. I should note that it took until 2025 for HDR10+ to be supported across Disney+ and Hulu, so hopefully everyone is a little more aggressive this time around.
Advanced should reach other TV brands in the near future, though nothing firm has been announced. Some bad news is that Samsung doesn’t have any plans to bring the standard to pre-2026 TVs. This may be a consequence of processor requirements, assuming the tech is anything like Dolby Vision 2. That format just won’t run on anything slower than a MediaTek Pentonic 800 chip.
Why does HDR10+ Advanced matter?
Fixing a hole and building a mountain
Advanced expands the metadata available to filmmakers, a key focus being “AI-driven” tone mapping to improve shadow detail while supporting the extreme brightness of the best new TVs. I’m also expecting this to help budget and mid-tier TVs, though, given that fixing that gap is an explicit goal of Dolby Vision 2. Like Vision 1, HDR10+ can sometimes render scenes too dark if it’s paired with less-than-stellar specs.
The new format adapts on a genre-by-genre basis, which is crucial for one feature in particular: Intelligent Motion Smoothing. Traditionally, smoothing has been applied as a universal setting on TVs, improving news and sports, but wrecking movies and “prestige” TV shows. This happens because the standard cinematic framerate is 24fps, which produces a natural, dreamlike motion blur. Motion smoothing inserts artificially generated frames, not only killing this blur, but reminding people of the cheap shot-on-tape soap operas of the ’80s and ’90s. Since Advanced can control smoothing based on metadata, it should be reduced or disabled as necessary without impacting everything else.
