Samsung Electronics is hitting back against Dolby with the imminent launch of a new generation of its high dynamic range format, HDR10+ Advanced.
It’s the company’s response to the recently unveiled Dolby Vision 2 format that was discussed at IFA 2025 and is expected to be supported by a number of top-tier 2026 TV models when they launch next year.
HDR10+ Advanced will launch on Samsung’s higher-end 2026 TVs, the company confirmed, and may also be backwards-compatible with some of its existing models.
Perhaps the most exciting new feature inHDR10+ Advanced is the inclusion of a special setting called HDR10+ Bright. It’s a special picture mode that takes advantage of extended metadata to reproduce more nuanced variations in brightness, colour and contrast, taking advantage of newer, brighter-than-ever display technologies.
In other words, it taps into the additional brightness of newer Mini-LED TVs to deliver better colour performance, the company explained. It utilises artificial intelligence algorithms to support a wider range of dynamic brightness, and will be most effective on panels that can hit numbers of around 4,000 to 5,000 nits peak brightness. It will also support extended coverage of most colour gamuts, including up to 100% of the BT.2020 spectrum.
HDR10+ Bright also boasts enhanced tone mapping capabilities that are based on a new AI-native system, allowing for more precise brightness control in different parts of the picture. This will result in deeper contrast and superior “image depth”, the company promised. In addition, Samsung’s engineers also talked about the enhanced colour control that’s enabled by HDR10+ Advanced. It said its TVs will be able to reproduce a more lifelike range of colours than was previously possible. It will leverage enhanced metadata provided by content creators to do this, so we can assume that it will require those creators to get onboard.
HDTVTest's Vincent Teoh explained more about how it works in this video:
There are other new capabilities too. For instance, Samsung presented a new HDR10+ Genre setting that relies on AI-based content recognition algorithms to automatically identify the type of content being played on-screen. Alternatively, users can activate this setting manually. Once activated, it will apply specific tone mapping curves and other processing parameters to the picture to make it jump out. Samsung said drama shows will appear more natural with this setting enabled, while sports events will display punchier colours with smoother motion.
Another new capability applies directly to motion control. It’s called HDR10+ Advanced Intelligent Motion Smoothing, and will use AI to identify when it needs to be applied and how much it should apply it. According to Samsung, content creators will be able to signal the strength of the most optimal frame rate interpolation needed for each scene. This can be adjusted based on the type of content and can also take into account different ambient lighting environments.
Gaming will also be boosted by HDR10+ Advanced. Samsung said it’s applying ambient lighting-adjusted tone mapping to cloud gaming services in real time. This will happen when users select the HDR10+ Gaming mode, or alternatively switch on the Game picture mode on their Samsung TVs. The focus is on cloud gaming initially, and it wasn’t made clear if Samsung also intends to make this work with console games.
Samsung didn’t mention Dolby Vision 2, and instead talked about how TV display technology has evolved in the last couple of years, necessitating a revamp of its HDR format. For instance, many TV brands offer much brighter panels than before, particularly on Mini-LED TVs, and there are brand new technologies too, such as RGB Mini-LED and Micro RGB. Moreover, the company said global streaming subscriptions are on the rise, and will likely hit 2.1 billion worldwide by the end of 2028.
It says people need a better way to appreciate streaming content on these newer TVs and take advantage of their enhanced capabilities, and that’s why it has come up with HDR10+ Advanced. Of course, the company has been compelled to do something about the launch of Dolby Vision 2, but it declined to talk about this.
There are still many questions about HDR10+ Advanced, and they have gone unanswered for the time being because the technology is still in development. In fact, the company couldn’t even show reporters what the technology really looks like. Instead, it simply presented a “simulation” of what it hopes it will be able to achieve (see image above). But the general idea is that viewers will see brighter and more colourful pictures with enhanced contrast in dark details and more realistic motion smoothing.
Still, Samsung expects development to proceed fast, and promised that it will be ready and supported by most of its 2026 TV range, when it launches in the first half of next year. With any luck, it’s being developed specifically to take advantage of Samsung’s best TVs, including its new 115-inch Micro RGB TV, which launched in the U.S. and South Korea and will soon come to the U.K.
Samsung has not promised that all of its 2026 TVs will support HDR10+ Advanced, and we feel that it’s unlikely to replace the standard HDR10+ technology on every one of its new models. It feels like HDR10+ Advanced is a technology that’s reserved for Samsung’s higher-end TVs, though we’re optimistic that it will also come to some of its 2025 models, like the aforementioned Micro RGB TV.
There are questions about which content creators and streaming platforms will actually support HDR10+ Advanced. So far, Samsung hasn’t named any names, but the company has been making progress here, with Netflix adding support for HDR10 and Disney recently announcing plans to do the same. With any luck, they can be convinced to support the newer format, too.
For now, Samsung isn’t saying anything beyond what was mentioned above, but we expect to hear much more about HDR10+ Advanced at the CES 2026 show in January.
