Warner Bros. has finally made good on its promise to support the HDR10+ High Dynamic Range format, more than 18 months after first saying it would. Its first title to support HDR10+ is Godzilla: King of the Monsters, which also supports competing formats such as Dolby Vision and standard HDR. 

The news was first reported by Jon Archer in Forbes, who said the decision means viewers will be able to benefit from enhanced, frame-by-frame picture information that produces a more detailed image on screen, regardless of which TV or 4K media player they use. 

Warner Bros. said Godzilla: King of the Monsters will be released on August 27.

Another studio, Universal Pictures, has also announced it too will support both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision on four of its upcoming 4K Blu-ray titles. These include The Secret Life of Pets 2, which is also being released on August 27, plus Simon Pegg's Cornetto Trilogy - Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and The World's End – which will be released on September 10. 

The announcements will surely be most welcome by movie enthusiasts who might have been worried about the prospect of yet another format war, similar to that of VHS vs Betamax, or the more recent struggle between Blu-ray and HD DVD, where certain titles would only be made available on one or the other format. 

For a long time it wasn’t clear if Warner Bros. would actually live up to its promise to support HDR10+, which was first made in January 2018. But its decision to follow through highlights how the format is gaining steam, as it’s also supported by the likes of Samsung, Pansonic, Amazon Prime Video and 20th Century Fox. The rival format Dolby Vision also has its fair share of industry support, backed by TV brands Sony, Panasonic and Philips, plus Apple TV 4K and Google Chromecast Ultra, among others. 

We note that Panasonic was the first brand to announce support for both premium HDR formats, and China’s TCL has also promised to launch TVs that support both later in the year. 

The HDR10+ and Dolby Vision formats both use dynamic metadata to interpret picture information on a frame-by-frame basis, which means they deliver superior images to Standard HDR, which only carries static metadata.