Posted Mon Aug 28, 2017 at 08:30 AM PDT by Steven Cohen
The companies are joining forces to help establish the upcoming HDR10+ format.
Samsung, Panasonic, and 20th Century Fox have announced a partnership to bring HDR10+ devices and content to the market. Serving as an updated version of the HDR10 open standard for high dynamic range content, HDR10+ uses dynamic metadata to create improved contrast and colors.
"As leaders in home entertainment content and hardware, the three companies are ideal partners for bringing HDR10+ into the homes of consumers everywhere," said Jongsuk Chu, Senior Vice President of the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. "We are committed to making the latest technology available in our TVs and are confident that HDR10+ will deliver premium quality content and enhance the way you experience television programs and movies in the home."
Currently, the standard HDR10 format uses static metadata that does not change during playback, offering a fixed picture enhancement across an entire piece of content. This can lead to inconsistent HDR quality in certain scenes, especially if a movie has an overall bright color palette mixed in with a few dimly lit sequences. But with HDR10+, the format is now introducing dynamic metadata which will allow a compatible display to adjust brightness levels on a scene-by-scene or even frame-by-frame basis, producing images that are closer to the director's intent. Likewise, this upgrade makes the new HDR10+ standard more in line with the competing Dolby Vision HDR process, which already incorporates dynamic metadata along with higher specs for max color and brightness performance compared to HDR10.
"HDR10+ is a technological step forward that optimizes picture quality for next generation displays," said Danny Kaye, Executive Vice President at 20th Century Fox and Managing Director of the Fox Innovation Lab. "HDR10+ provides dynamic metadata, which precisely describes every scene to deliver unprecedented picture quality. Working in partnership with Panasonic and Samsung through the Fox Innovation Lab, we are able to bring new platforms like HDR10+ to the market that more accurately realize the vision of our filmmakers beyond the theater."
As part of the agreement, Samsung, Panasonic, and Fox will develop a licensing entity that will start licensing the HDR10+ platform to content companies, Ultra HD TVs, Blu-ray disc players/recorders, set-top box manufacturers, and SoC vendors in January 2018. And unlike Dolby Vision, HDR10+ will be an open, royalty free tech with only a nominal administrative fee required for use.
While there is no HDR10+ content currently available, Samsung has already announced HDR10+ support for its 2017 Ultra HD TV lineup. Likewise, the manufacturer has also stated plans to offer an HDR10+ firmware update for its 2016 display models. Meanwhile, Amazon is set to launch support for HDR10+ content through Prime Video at a later date. More details and demos for HDR10+ will be revealed at CES 2018.
Source: Business Wire
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