HDR HDR10+ DolbyVision

 The HDR10 format allows for a maximum brightness of 1,000 nits, and a color-depth of 10 bits. 

HDR10+ increases the maximum brightness to 4,000 nits, which thereby increases contrast too. But the biggest difference is in how HDR10+ handles information. With HDR10, the “metadata” that is fed by the content source is static, which means there’s one set of values established for a whole piece of content, like an entire movie. HDR10+ makes this metadata dynamic, allowing it to change for each frame of video. This means every frame is treated to its own set of colors, brightness, and contrast parameters making for a much more realistic-looking image. Areas of the screen that might have been over-saturated under HDR10 display their full details with HDR10+.

HDR10+ was developed by a consortium of three companies — 20th Century Fox, Panasonic, and Samsung. As such, HDR10+ compatibility has so far been limited to TV models by Samsung and Panasonic. On the content side of the equation, there isn’t a lot of support for HDR10+ yet either, though that’s beginning to change. Netflix does not support the new format, but Amazon Prime Video does. In April 2019, Universal made a commitment to release both new and back-catalog titles in HDR10+, and 20th Century Fox is set to do the same. However, 20th Century Fox is now owned by Disney, which might actually have an effect on its HDR10+ plans because Disney has thrown its support behind Dolby Vision, a more established HDR format.

HDR10+ isn’t the only HDR format with ambitions of becoming the next king of the HDR castle. Dolby Vision is an advanced HDR format created by Dolby Labs, the same organization behind the famous collection of Dolby audio technologies like Dolby Digital and Dolby Atmos. Dolby Vision is very similar to HDR10+ in that it uses dynamic, not static metadata, giving each frame its own unique HDR treatment. But Dolby Vision provides for even greater brightness (up to 10,000 nits) and more colors too (12-bit depth, for a staggering 68 billion colors).