Samsung and Prime Video debut next-gen HDR10+ Advanced TV standard

Samsung and Prime Video are bringing HDR10+ Advanced to TVs for the first time, beginning with Samsung’s 2026 TV lineup.

The technology marks a significant step in the evolution of HDR. HDR10+ Advanced is designed for displays capable of higher peak brightness, wider colour depth and increased processing power. It builds on the original HDR10+ format by adding new capabilities intended to deliver brighter, more accurate and more immersive images across supported content.

Samsung says the move reflects changing viewing habits.

“As home viewing options become more diverse, users are prioritizing elite viewing standards and greater levels of immersion,” said Taeyong Son, Executive Vice President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “By collaborating with Prime Video, we are bringing HDR10+ ADVANCED to home entertainment systems for the first time, we are elevating the home viewing experience all over the world.”

Prime Video will begin offering HDR10+ Advanced on selected titles globally from August 2026. The service will be available first on Samsung’s 2026 TVs, with wider device support expected as the ecosystem grows. The format is designed to preserve creative intent while giving compatible displays more detailed metadata to work with, allowing them to make fuller use of their brightness and processing capabilities.

Two new features define the upgrade. Enhanced Overall Brightness uses extended statistical metadata to push modern displays closer to their peak luminance, improving highlight precision and tonal accuracy. AI‑driven tone mapping helps maintain shadow detail in darker scenes and increases brightness for sports and action content. Intelligent Motion Smoothing adds further refinement. It uses scene‑by‑scene metadata to adjust motion processing dynamically, keeping film content cinematic while delivering smoother motion for fast‑moving scenes.

Commentators suggest that picture quality improvements will be immediately visible.

“At Prime Video, we’re dedicated to providing the best possible viewing experience, and HDR10+ ADVANCED represents a meaningful step forward for our customers,” said BA Winston, Vice President of Technology at Prime Video. “With Enhanced Overall Brightness and Intelligent Motion Smoothing, the picture quality adapts to bring out the best details in every scene, and we’re excited to deliver richer, more dynamic visuals on the titles our Prime Video customers love on supported devices.”

The partnership builds on a long history between the two companies. Prime Video was the first streaming service to adopt HDR10+ in 2017, making its entire HDR catalogue available in the format on Samsung’s UHD TVs.

HDR10+ Advanced vs Dolby Vision 2

The move is a clear response to the launch of Dolby Vision 2. Samsung has long snubbed Dolby Vision as an HDR standard.

Both HDR10+ Advanced and Dolby Vision 2 are intended to exploit advances in screen brtightness. They share the same broad goal: to give TVs more granular scene information so they can render highlights, shadows and motion more accurately. The difference lies in how each format approaches metadata, motion handling and ecosystem.

HDR10+ Advanced builds on the existing HDR10+ framework. It remains an open, royalty‑free standard, using dynamic metadata to guide tone‑mapping on a scene‑by‑scene basis. Dolby Vision 2 is the latest evolution of Dolby’s proprietary HDR format. It continues to use dynamic metadata but adds new layers of processing designed for ultra‑bright displays and high‑frame‑rate content.

Dolby Vision 2 is heading to TVs from Hisense, LG, Sony, Panasonic and TCL. Dolby’s ecosystem is broader in terms of manufacturer adoption, and Dolby Vision remains widely used in UHD Blu‑ray mastering and cinema workflows.

Significantly, Dolby Vision 2 is built around Dolby’s own content‑creation pipeline, which includes Dolby Vision mastering tools and Dolby’s certification programme. HDR10+ Advanced is designed to be more flexible, allowing content providers and manufacturers to adopt the format without licensing fees.

HDR10+ Advanced will debut on Samsung’s 2026 TVs, with Prime Video as the first streaming service to support it. The HDR10+ ecosystem already includes 183 adopters and more than 22,000 certified products, though support varies by manufacturer.

More details on HDR10+ Advanced can be found at hdr10plus.org/advanced.