Samsung and Amazon are teaming to deliver a higher standard of high-dynamic-range (HDR) performance to the video market. The Samsung-backed HDR10+ technology (based on the SMPTE 2094-40 standard) is an updated open standard that leverages dynamic metadata to produce enhanced contrast and colors on an expanded range of televisions. Samsung is positioning the standard as a royalty-free dynamic-metadata alternative to Dolby Vision, which uses dynamic metadata but requires a licensing fee. Since this is an open standard that anyone can adopt, Samsung sees it as expanding dynamic metadata to low-and mid-priced 4K TVs.
Amazon Video is the first streaming video service that will implement HDR10+ technology to deliver a new source of high-quality digital video to Prime Video customers, the company said.
HDR10+ elevates the HDR10 open standard with the addition of Dynamic Tone Mapping. The current HDR10 standard utilizes static metadata that does not change during playback despite scene specific brightness levels. As a result, image quality may not be optimal in some scenes. For example, when a movie’s overall color scheme is very bright but has a few scenes filmed in relatively dim lighting, those scenes will appear significantly darker than originally envisioned by the director. HDR10+ incorporates dynamic metadata that allows an HDR TV to adjust brightness levels on a scene-by-scene or even frame-by-frame basis.
