If you have one of Samsung's latter-day QLED or UHD high-end TVs like the Samsung Q9F, you're in for a treat. As of today, you can stream in HDR10+ now on the units through Amazon Prime Video.
Samsung claimed in a press release that it's the first time this kind of quality has been achieved through streaming alone. Netflix told us just two days ago that there's a "possibility" the same HDR10+ support could come to its own service, but the vague nature of the response likely means that kind of support is still far in the future.
You won't be able to immediately stream every movie at that kind of resolution, of course, but there's a decent-sized sampling of 100 shows and movies already on offer. Predictability, many of these (such as The Tick and The Grand Tour) come from Amazon's own studios, which means it's had this plan in its sights for a while.
Tossing the licenses
In fact, HDR10+ is an open standard for HDR video that was developed by Amazon and Samsung themselves, and it's particularly known for the way it can adjust brightness automatically as needed.
It's also open source, which means neither Amazon or Samsung have to pay royalties for the impressive Dolby Vision, an HDR standard that works with a 12-bit palette rather than HDR10+'s 10. Beyond that, the formats HDR10, HLC and Advanced HDR are also vying for top spot in the increasingly crowded (and complicated) field.
If it works well enough (and the absence of licensing proves appealing enough), maybe that will spur Netflix to get its own HDR10+ content out sooner than later.
