Universal Pictures will master new and existing titles in HDR10+
The partnership with Samsung will create some of the first HDR10+ content.
Now that Samsung has established HDR10+ as a viable and accessible alternative to Dolby Vision HDR, it's looking to bring more HDR content to viewers. To do so, Samsung is partnering with Universal Pictures Home Entertainment (UPHE) to master a selection of new releases and existing movies and shows with the standard. Not only will we soon have more HDR10+ hardware, we'll also have something to watch on it.
The battle between Dolby Vision and HDR10+ has been waging for years. Both standards use "dynamic metadata" to adjust brightness on a scene-by-scene or frame-by-frame basis. The most touted benefit is that dark scenes can look more like their creator originally intended. Dolby Vision has a slightly wider color range and a higher maximum nit brightness, but the company charges royalties. HDR10+ is royalty free, and the partners behind it have opened a licensing and certification logo program to other TV manufacturers.
While we're getting closer to the hardware being in more living rooms, the only HDR10+ content so far is the Amazon Prime Video HDR catalog. Previously, 20th Century Fox agreed to bring the standard to its new releases, but we haven't seen any yet. Now we can be on the lookout for UPHE movies and shows in HDR10+, too. That means you could see films like Green Book in a whole new way -- though it's hard to say when.
