20th Century Fox, Panasonic, Samsung Partner on HDR10+ Tech

By Modupe Gbadeyanka

A new partnership to create an open, royalty-free dynamic metadata platform for High Dynamic Range (HDR) through an associated certification and logo program, tentatively called HDR10+ has been signed by 20th Century Fox, Panasonic Corporation and Samsung Electronics.

It was gathered that together, the three firms will form a licensing entity that will begin licensing the HDR10+ platform in January 2018.

The entity will license the metadata broadly to content companies, ultra-high definition TVs, Blu-ray disc players/recorders and set-top box manufacturers, as well as SoC vendors, royalty-free with only 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.”

HDR10+ is a cutting-edge technology, building upon the benefits of HDR televisions, which offers the best possible viewing experience for next generation displays. HDR10+ provides unprecedented picture quality on all displays with brightness, colour, and contrast automatically optimized for each scene.

In previous iterations, static tone mapping applied a fixed enhancement across an entire piece of content.

With HDR10+ dynamic tone mapping, every scene is individually enhanced to bring to life vibrant visuals and achieve unprecedented picture quality. This new enhanced visual experience will allow consumers to see pictures that match the intention of filmmakers.

“HDR10+ is a technological step forward that optimizes picture quality for next generation displays,” said Danny Kaye, Executive Vice President at 20th Century Fox and Managing Director of the Fox Innovation Lab. “HDR10+ provides dynamic metadata, which precisely describes every scene to deliver unprecedented picture quality. Working in partnership with Panasonic and Samsung through the Fox Innovation Lab, we are able to bring new platforms like HDR10+ to the market that more accurately realize the vision of our filmmakers beyond the theatre.”

There are several key benefits for partners who wish to adopt the platform for their HDR10+ compliant products.

HDR10+ offers system flexibility, allowing a variety of partners, including content creators, content distributors, TV manufacturers and device makers, to incorporate this platform and improve the viewing experience for audiences.

The HDR10+ platform was designed to allow for future development and innovation in order to deliver a more powerful technology in the years to come.

“Panasonic has a long history of working with industry leaders to develop lasting technical formats. We are delighted to work together with 20th Century Fox and Samsung to develop a new HDR format, which will bring consumers so many benefits,” said Yuki Kusumi, Executive Officer at Panasonic. “By offering considerable HDR picture quality improvements across a wider range of TVs while accelerating the amount of premium HDR content available, we expect HDR10+ to quickly become the defacto HDR format.”