Samsung, 20th Century Fox, Panasonic partner on HDR10+

Samsung Electronics has partnered with 20th Century Fox and Panasonic Corporation to kick off an HDR10+ licensing and logo programme in January 2018.

The companies will form a licensing entity that will start to license the HDR10+ platform to content companies, ultra-high definition TVs, Blu-ray disc players, set-top box manufacturers, and SoC vendors.

HDR10+ is designed to build upon the benefits of HDR televisions and will be offered royalty-free with 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,” said Jongsuk Chu, senior vice president of the visual display business at Samsung Electronics.

“We are committed to making the latest technology available in our TVs and are confident that HDR10+ will deliver premium quality content and enhance the way you experience television programs and movies in the home.”

Samsung announced HDR10+, an updated version of its open HDR10 standard, in April of this year, with Amazon Video coming on board as an initial partner.

The HDR10+ update added ‘dynamic metadata’, which allows a high dynamic range (HDR) TV to adjust brightness levels on a scene-by-scene or frame-by-frame basis.

The earlier HDR10 standard used static metadata that does not change during playback despite scene-specific brightness levels.

Samsung said all of its 2017 UHD TVs support HDR10+ and that its 2016 UHD TVs will gain HDR10+ support through a firmware update in the second half of this year.

Amazon committed to make HDR10+ available on its Prime Video streaming service globally later this year.