Starting today, Amazon will offer around 100 TV shows and movies in the new HDR10+ format. The content will initially be available to stream on 2017 Samsung TVs, with more brands and TVs coming onboard next year.
First content in HDR10+
Today marks the official debut of HDR10+. The new HDR format was pioneered by Samsung as an alternative to Dolby Vision. Like Dolby Vision, it takes advantage of dynamic metadata to optimize picture representation on a scene-by-scene basis. It was first announced in April 2017. However, up until today there has been no content available in HDR10+.
Amazon says that it will offer 100 TV shows and movies in the format, including The Grand Tour, The Tick, and The Man in the High Castle.
- "We are excited to be able to offer 'HDR10 Plus' content to Amazon Video customers around the globe," said Greg Hart, vice president of Amazon Video. "We're eager to have 'HDR10 Plus' video open a new era of entertainment."
At launch today, HDR10+ content will be available only on Samsung 2017 TVs. Other TVs will get served the same shows and movies in either the baseline HDR10 format or Dolby Vision. Additional TV makers such as Panasonic and Philips as well as Hollywood studio 20th Century Fox have pledged support for HDR10+, and some of these companies recently formed an HDR10+ alliance to promote the format and establish a certification program. Amazon is not part of the alliance.
Also read: HDR video formats - the prospects
At the time of writing, no other content distributors have pledged support for HDR10+ but with CES 2018 kicking off just one month from now, we expect to hear more announcements soon.
Samsung has said that it will enable HDR10+ on its 2016 TVs via a firmware update in the second half of 2017 but apparently the 2016 TVs are not supported at launch.
- Source: Samsung Korea
