20th Century Fox, Panasonic and Samsung announced a partnership to create an open, royalty-free dynamic metadata platform for High Dynamic Range (HDR) through an associated certification and logo programme, tentatively called HDR10+.
The three companies will form an entity which will begin licensing the HDR10+ platform in January 2018. They will license the metadata broadly to content companies, ultra-high definition televisions, Blu-ray disc players, recorders and set-top box manufacturers, as well as system-on-a-chip vendors, royalty-free with only a nominal administrative fee.
“As leaders in home entertainment content and hardware, the three companies are ideal partners for bringing HDR10+ into the homes of consumers everywhere,” says Justin Hume, marketing director of Samsung South Africa.
HDR10+ builds on the benefits of HDR televisions, which offer the best possible viewing experience for next generation displays. HDR10+ provides unprecedented picture quality on all displays with brightness, colour, and contrast automatically optimised for each scene. In previous iterations, static tone mapping applied a fixed enhancement across an entire piece of content. With HDR10+ dynamic tone mapping, every scene is individually enhanced to bring to life vibrant visuals and achieve unprecedented picture quality. This new enhanced visual experience will allow consumers to see pictures that match the intention of filmmakers.
HDR10+ is a technological step forward that optimises picture quality for next generation displays. Working in partnership with Panasonic and the Fox Innovation Lab, Samsung is able to bring new platforms like HDR10+ to the market, providing better images of what filmmakers intended with their work.
There are several benefits for partners who wish to adopt the platform for their HDR10+ compliant products. HDR10+ offers system flexibility, allowing a variety of partners — including content creators, content distributors, television manufacturers and device makers — to incorporate this platform and improve the viewing experience for audiences. The HDR10+ platform was designed to allow for future development and innovation to deliver a more powerful technology in the years to come.
The move to make the technology open source comes after Samsung signed a deal with Amazon Video in April to offer HDR10+ content later this year.
“We are committed to making the latest technology available in our televisions and are confident that HDR10+ will deliver premium quality content and enhance the way you experience television programmes and movies in the home,” concludes Hume.
