Rich and Vibrant Colors

As of 2026, HDR10+ is supported by over 180 licensees and more than 22,000 certified devices, including most major television brands. It’s also featured in mobile phones, UHD Blu-ray players and a variety of streaming services, and has been adopted in industries ranging from automotive infotainment to in-flight entertainment.

HDR10+ GAMING optimizes HDR display settings dynamically for video games, enhancing overall visibility and more immersive game playing. HDR10+ ADAPTIVE adjusts content based on ambient lighting conditions, ensuring optimal contrast and detail in both dark rooms and bright environments for a consistent viewing experience.

HDR10+ metadata can be generated during post-production mastering, live productions, or transcoding for distribution on formats like UHD Blu-ray, OTT streaming, and broadcast television, using tools and encoders that are available for both professional and mobile workflows. Since HDR10+ metadata creation is automatic, it is extremely cost-effective to simply generate at encode time, and there is no need to pre-compute, store, or archive the data.

Yes, HDR10+ is fully backward compatible with HDR10, the base HDR format.

Although devices that only support HDR10 can play HDR10+ content, they can only use the static metadata portion without any dynamic enhancements. It is effortless for HDR services to adopt HDR10+ as existing HDR10+ content does not need to be reencoded. HDR10+ metadata can simply be calculated and injected into existing compressed streams without going back to source or mezzanine content!

Local tone mapping allows brightness and contrast adjustments on a zone-by-zone basis within a frame, preserving highlights (like sunlight) and without crushing shadows (like dark interiors).

HDR allows creators to use light and shadow more expressively, to better engage the viewer’s attention. With dynamic range that mirrors real-life scenes, directors and cinematographers can craft visuals that are more immersive and emotionally impactful.  HDR10+ ensures that these creative decisions can be seen on the widest variety of displays even if the mastering display was of higher quality than what may be in any one particular home!

HDR10+ uses dynamic metadata to deliver scene-by-scene or frame-by-frame instructions for brightness, contrast, and color. This allows the display to optimize tone mapping in real time, preserving the detail in both shadows and highlights.  HDR10+ Live encoding (e.g. for sports) always uses frame-by-frame data while VOD content uses scene-based data of which many scenes may be a single frame or a short sequence.

HDR10 uses static metadata, meaning a single tone mapping curve is applied to the entire video program. This “one-size-fits-all” approach is unable to adapt to variations in scene brightness—such as a dark night followed by a bright explosion—leading to crushed shadows or blown-out highlights on many displays.

No. Both HDR10+ and HDR10+ ADVANCED support quantization up to 16 bits at the specification level — this has been true since HDR10+’s introduction. Today’s streaming services deliver all HDR content at 10 bits because that is the current ceiling of practical streaming video codecs, a constraint that applies equally to every HDR format. The standard is not the limit; the codec is.

Some HDR formats are marketed as supporting 12 bits. In streaming, these formats are also delivered at 10 bits, the same as HDR10+. The 12-bit capability refers to a specific disc format with very limited real-world adoption by studios. A separate claim holds that a different color encoding method makes 10-bit “equivalent to 12-bit.” Published research puts the actual efficiency improvement from this method at approximately 10% for certain content — a real but modest advantage, and far short of the four-fold precision difference that distinguishes 10-bit from 12-bit.

Bit depth and peak brightness are also independent. HDR10+ uses the PQ (Perceptual Quantizer) transfer function defined in SMPTE ST 2084, which covers content from 0 to 10,000 nits regardless of bit depth. Claims that 10-bit color depth limits HDR to 1,000 nits are technically incorrect.

While 4K resolution and higher frame rates improve detail and motion smoothness, HDR fundamentally enhances the realism of an image by expanding the range between the darkest blacks and brightest whites in a scene (what cinematographers call “grayscale”. ) This allows viewers to see subtle gradations in “shadows” and “highlights” that mimic natural human vision, making HDR a key factor for better picture quality. This has been recognized by movie studios, OTT streaming services, broadcasting networks, and professionals.

For the latest list of UHD Blu-Ray discs that support HDR10+, please see the following website.

HDR10+ supports a peak brightness up to 10,000 nits.

No. HDR10+ does not charge a per device royalty fee to support the technology.

HDR10+ devices are tested and certified for quality and compatibility. Please see the list of certified products to see if yours are HDR10+ certified.

Yes, HDR10+ is completely backwards compatible with HDR10. An HDR10 only device that receives and HDR10+ signal will play without issues in HDR10.

There is a growing number of devices and content that supports HDR10+. Please see the list of certified products and services.

Because HDR10+ is backwards compatible with HDR10, when HDR10+ content is viewed on an HDR10 display, it is simply just HDR10 content.

No. Neither HDR10+ nor HDR10+ ADVANCED is limited to 4,000 nits, 5,000 nits, or any figure below 10,000 nits. Both specifications support the complete PQ (Perceptual Quantizer) brightness range from 0 to 10,000 nits, as defined by SMPTE ST 2084 — the international standard for HDR video. The 4,000-nit figure that appears in some HDR comparisons originated during a period when a widely used HDR reference monitor capable of approximately 4,000 nits of peak brightness was the standard mastering tool at many studios. Content from that era was graded to a 4,000-nit ceiling because that was what the equipment could display — not because any HDR10+ specification required it. That monitor has since been discontinued.

HDR10+ and all major HDR formats that use the PQ transfer function share the same 10,000-nit brightness ceiling — it is a property of the shared standard, not of any individual format. When a comparison claims one HDR format supports 10,000 nits and another supports only 4,000, it is describing a historical difference in mastering practice, not a difference in what the specifications permit. HDR10+ content has already been mastered to the full 10,000-nit range. The Spears & Munsil Ultra HD HDR Benchmark (2023 Edition) — a professional 4K Blu-ray test disc used by display manufacturers, calibrators, and AV reviewers worldwide — encodes content mastered at 10,000 nits in HDR10+ alongside HDR10 and other formats. It is commercially available and has been reviewed by Sound & Vision, AVForums, and TechRadar, among others.

Most professional HDR content today is mastered to 1,000 nits, matching the peak capability of current premium consumer displays. The brightness a viewer experiences is determined by their display’s panel capability — not the HDR format. A television with 1,000 nits of peak brightness shows all HDR formats at the same maximum brightness. What HDR10+’s dynamic metadata does is ensure your display uses its full brightness capability intelligently: optimizing tone mapping for each scene rather than applying a single fixed setting to the entire program, so every scene looks its best on whatever display you have.

HDR10+ ADVANCED adds six key enhancements: extended brightness support (at up to 10,000 nits), intelligent motion smoothing (Intelligent FRC), local tone mapping, genre-based optimization, advanced color control, and adaptive cloud gaming with ambient light adjustments.