A new TV format war soon

Another lounge room format war is looming as Samsung and Amazon Video unveil HDR10+ to rival Dolby Vision, backed by LG and Netflix.

High Dynamic Range has been the ‘‘next big thing’’ in home entertainment for the past few years, boosting the contrast to reveal more detail in the brightest highlights and darkest shadows.

I’d argue that it’s more important than Ultra HD, as HDR dramatically improves the picture quality regardless of the screen size and resolution.

While HDR goes by a few names, until now the various formats have been backwards compatible so you wouldn’t class it as a true format war. You haven’t been forced to choose between them, but that’s about to change.

HDR10 is the baseline HDR format, with metadata which sets the dynamic range – the difference between the brightest white and the darkest black – for the entire movie.

These days you’ll find HDR10 on most Ultra HD Blu-ray discs and some streaming services, but

Only time will tell whether one format turns out to be a dud.

we’re still waiting for the first Dolby Vision-compatible Ultra HD Blu-ray discs and players – which should be on the shelves by the end of the year. Until then Netflix is the main source of Dolby Vision content.

Dolby Vision is a closed standard, players and TVS require a built-in decoding chip and manufacturers must pay licensing fees to Dolby. LG has championed Dolby Vision and a few other major TV makers are onboard, but fellow Korean tech giant and arch rival Samsung is not one of them.

There is another

Rather than jumping on the Dolby Vision bandwagon, Samsung has teamed up with Netflix rival Amazon Video to create the open HDR10+ standard.

Building on the HDR10 baseline, HDR10+ adopts Dolby Vision’s ability to optimise the dynamic range on the fly by embedding extra metadata for each scene. The new HDR10+ format still falls short of Dolby Vision when it comes to colour range and maximum brightness.

So where does that leave us? It’s unlikely television makers in the Dolby Vision camp like LG will add HDR10+ support, while it’s pretty certain those in the HDR10+ camp like Samsung won’t embrace Dolby Vision.

Only time will tell whether one format turns out to be a dud, the HD DVD or Betamax of High Dynamic Range. – Bloomberg