Samsung Electronics has announced a nifty new feature for gaming fans on its upcoming 2022 Neo QLED 8K and 4K TVs, saying most of its new models set to support its new HDR10+ gaming standard. 

With Samsung on the verge of unveiling its 2022 TV lineup at next month’s CES 2022 event in Las Vegas, the company said its new Q70 TV series and all models above that will feature the HDR10+ gaming extension, enabling a premium HDR gameplay experience. It will support automated HDR calibration, low latency, variable refresh rate and up to 120Hz gaming, the company said. 

The HDR10+ games standard was introduced in October, giving developers the tools they need to deliver a consistent HDR gaming experience without the need for gamers to manually calibrate their display. The standard is said to support various input sources, including consoles, PCs and others. 

What it means is, similar to HDR TV content, the game engine will automatically optimise the video game content in real-time to show more accurate pictures, preserving details in dark shadows and bright highlights. The display will also be configured to “true reference mode”, which means the colours will be displayed exactly as the game developer intended. 

Other features such as VRR will help to ensure smooth, fast motion game play, Samsung said. . 

It sounds great but there is a big caveat, in that games developers will need to optimise their titles for HDR10+ gaming. Samsung has promised titles from the games developer Sabre Interacive, which created Redout 2 and Pinball FX, that will be launched at CES. 

It also said Nvidia’s GeForce RTX 30 Series, RTX 20 Series and GTX 16 Series graphics cards will support HDR10+, with drivers set to be released early next year. 

So Nvidia GeForce gamers, at least, will be able to enjoy “brighter, more vivid and consistent HDR gaming experiences on their monitors or TVs,” said Nvidia Director of Product Management Vijay Sharma. 

Getting Nvidia onboard to support the new standard is a good start, but Samsung will have its work cut out to get the big two console platforms – Microsoft’s Xbox Series X and Sony’s PlayStation 5 – to join the party. To date, neither company has shown much interest in supporting HDR10+, with Microsoft instead opting to support the rival Dolby Vision standard and Sony refusing to support HDR10+ on its TVs.