20th Fox and Panasonic sign up to the HDR10+ standard in order to avoid having to pay for Dolby Vision
Image/Photo Credit: Samsung
Facing the threat of Dolby Vision, 20th Century Fox, Samsung and Panasonic have joined forces to form the HDR10+ Alliance, a new body with the sole aim to promote the new HDR10+ format.
Currently, two major HDR (High Dynamic Range) standards exist - Dolby Vision and HDR10.
Dolby Vision offers several improvements over HDR10, notably the support for dynamic metadata, which maps each scene to ensure the most accurate depiction, as opposed to only having data for the entire movie or TV show.
This, along with several other improvements, makes Dolby Vision the format of choice for obtaining the ultimate picture quality. The problem with Dolby Vision is its high licensing costs, something that the likes of Samsung and Panasonic have balked at.
The above two issues, the lack of dynamic metadata support and high licensing costs, is precisely why Samsung is putting its weight behind the HDR10+ format. HDR10+ will add dynamic metadata support to the HDR10 standard, and will still remain royalty-free (with a small administrative costs the only thing required for adoption of the format).
And this week, both 20th Century Fox and Samsung's major rival in the TV marketplace, Panasonic, both jumped on board the HDR10+ train, forming the HDR10+ Alliance to manage and promote the format. They join Amazon, who first indicated support for HDR10+ in April, allowing all 2017 Samsung 4KTVs to streaming selected Amazon Prime content in the format.
Sony, TCL and LG, among others, are firmly in the Dolby camp at the moment.
One Dolby Vision feature that further improves picture quality, but at the expense of an even higher implementation cost, is the inclusion of a special chip with display hardware that stores detailed information about the display's capabilities. This allows Dolby Vision 4KTV to have awareness of its own capabilities, and to adjust the picture quality to suit. It is unknown if HDR10+ will offer this feature.
Further details on the HDR10+ format, including information on its licensing program and a full demonstration of the format will be available at CES 2018, held in early January next year in Las Vegas, Nevada.
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