The HDMI Forum has announced an update to the HDMI standard. The new 2.0a specification adds support for HDR – or high dynamic range – that will be supported by high-end TVs from most manufacturers this year.

HDMI 2.0a adds HDR support
HDR, which can increase the contrast on TVs for brighter whites and deeper blacks, is still a very new thing in TVs. Samsung will launch its JS9500 TVs with HDR support very soon and the other manufacturers are expected to release HDR-capable sets this summer.


There is no final standard for HDR yet. Several parties are currently contributing and with the latest update to the HDMI standard one more piece has fallen into place. HDMI 2.0a adds support for HDR formats in the form of metadata. This means that a TV with HDMI 2.0a will be able to determine whether there is HDR – or not – included in a signal from for example a Blu-ray player. Non-HDR TVs will simply ignore the extra metadata.

The HDMI Forum says that the “HDR-related updates include references to CEA-861.3, CEA’s recently published update of HDR Static Metadata Extensions”.

HDMI 2.0a has no relevance for your current TV, but will be needed for HDR-capable TVs. It will be pushed out over the internet as a firmware upgrade to the relevant TVs later this year.