Exploring the Marvels of HDR Technology: HDR, HDR10, and HDR 10+

In today's landscape, HDR is not just a buzzword used by major TV manufacturers. With the relentless advancement of modern technology, consumers truly perceive the difference between a conventional TV and those equipped with HDR technology. Continuously improved hardware and higher-quality content give consumers more choices, intensifying competition among leading TV manufacturers.

1. Exploring the Marvels of HDR Technology: HDR, HDR10, and HDR 10+

In today's landscape, HDR is not just a buzzword used by major TV manufacturers. With the relentless advancement of modern technology, consumers truly perceive the difference between a conventional TV and those equipped with HDR technology. Continuously improved hardware and higher-quality content give consumers more choices, intensifying competition among leading TV manufacturers.

1. Understanding HDR

HDR (High Dynamic Range) signifies an expanded dynamic contrast range. The HDR standard is employed in various products such as cameras, smartphones, and TVs. Integrated into TVs, HDR enhances color contrast, accentuates color gamut, and prevents blurring or loss of detail. TVs meeting HDR standards display sharper images with detailed highlights and shadows compared to regular TVs.

Experts unanimously agree that contrast and color accuracy, equivalent to real life, are crucial factors.

When placing two TVs side by side, one with high contrast and color accuracy, and the other with higher resolution – more pixels, most users will always choose the first TV. When it seems to have more authentic colors, people will buy it, regardless of possibly lower resolution compared to others.

HDR is a groundbreaking technology that enhances both contrast and color depth. Bright areas are much brighter, adding more depth to the image. Colors can be more vibrant, making the image more dazzling. When viewing HDR content, the contrast between light and dark areas is clearer while still preserving details, avoiding washed-out or dull images.

HDR delivers more vivid images, brighter brights, darker darks without sacrificing too many details. Notably, when mentioning a display screen supporting HDR, it's often implied that the device has at least 10-bit color depth and supports a wider color gamut than a non-HDR screen. Therefore, high-quality content played on an HDR-enabled device will produce fresh, vibrant, natural-looking images.

Accompanying HDR is wide color gamut (WCG), offering more colors on the TV screen. WCG brings out colors never before seen on the screen, like the red of a fire truck, the purple of an eggplant, or even the green on each road sign.

2. How HDR Works

Two components make up an HDR system: the TV itself and the content source. To apply HDR, a TV needs to produce more light than a regular TV to clarify the differences in the image. As mentioned earlier, HDR comes with WCG, and through these two parallel systems, you get brighter images and display more colors. So, a TV with HDR support means it can display HDR content, not necessarily how well. The second part, the content source, is the tricky part. To fully utilize a TV with HDR, you need HDR content.

With such support, HDR10+ is seen as the future of screen design, or at least at the current moment.

3. HDR10, HDR10+

To explain, we need to understand what metadata is. They are additional information accompanying video signals from HDR content (movies, TV shows). Basically, metadata & instructions & how HDR TVs display wide dynamic range correctly. So now you understand HDR and HDR10+, and why people are excited about it.

HRD10

HDR (High Dynamic Range), also known as high dynamic range, is a feature that enhances contrast and color on TVs, allowing TVs to show full details in both bright and dark areas in the same frame.

HDR10 is an HDR format developed by TV manufacturers, exemplified by Samsung. HDR10 is calibrated with brightness ranging from 1000 - 1200 nits, on par with the limits of today's premium TVs.

HDR10 operates through systems employing static metadata to mimic color grading attributes, applied to the entire video. If you see a TV announced as supporting HDR without specifying the HDR format, it's 100% HDR10, and 4K Blu-ray players are also calibrated to the HDR10 format.

HDR10+

The advancement in HDR technology takes a leap forward as Samsung introduces HDR10+ technology, enhancing brightness support up to 4000 nits with the assistance of tech and entertainment giants like Panasonic, Philips Amazon, and 20th Century Fox. A notable feature of HDR10+ is enhancing image depth and detail without altering the inherent characteristics of the image.