▲ Samsung Neo QLED 4K TV (QN85F)

Samsung Electronics today announced that its smart TVs and monitors will now support Netflix shows and movies in HDR10+.¹ With HDR10+, viewers can enjoy richer contrast, deeper colors and stunning visual depth, making their favorite Netflix titles more immersive than ever.

“HDR10+ enhances the way we watch content, delivering deeper contrast and more vibrant colors for a truly cinematic experience,” said Taeyong Son, Executive Vice President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “We are excited to bring this technology to Netflix’s 300 million plus members and will continue collaborating with various partners to expand HDR10+ support across our product lineup and the broader streaming ecosystem.”

HDR10+ is a next-generation high dynamic range (HDR) technology pioneered by Samsung, designed to optimize picture quality scene by scene. By dynamically adjusting brightness and contrast levels, HDR10+ ensures that each frame is displayed with exceptional clarity and detail, staying true to the creator’s intent.

With this integration, viewers can experience enhanced realism and depth across a growing library of HDR10+ content, making every scene feel more lifelike. HDR10+ content on Netflix will be accessible on 2025 Samsung Neo QLED, OLED and Lifestyle TVs — as well as 2025 and 2024 monitor models — with support for additional models in the future.

This launch marks a significant step in expanding HDR10+ content, bringing enhanced picture quality to more viewers. In addition to Netflix, Samsung is actively working with a growing network of industry partners to further extend HDR10+ support. For more information on Samsung TV, please visit www.samsung.com.

¹ Samsung co-established HDR10+ Technologies LLC in 2018 to provide a royalty-free, open dynamic metadata standard in the industry.

The Premiere was created based on research into and an understanding of real users’ environments and spaces. Its appearance, as well as its functionality, was refined with precision so that the projector fits comfortably into a user’s space as opposed to being a cumbersome device that can only be taken out and used every now and then. In order to learn more about the innovative concept behind The Premiere, Samsung Newsroom sat down with its designers to hear about the journey they went on when creating this unique screen.

A Design That Blends In, Inspired by Users’ Environments

Sungil Bang, Designer at Samsung Electronics’ Visual Display Business

The Premiere’s designers first started by delving into and analyzing the projector market in order to be able to develop a differentiated product. “There are already so many projectors in the market, from affordable ones to high-end ones, all with different specifications,” noted Sungil Bang. “We knew we needed to take a new approach right from the planning stages in order to come up with a product that goes beyond simply being a projector.”

The designers honed in on the idea of the actual space where a projector is to be placed. They focused on the lifestyle and environment trends followed by real users in order to establish their direction for creating a product that provides genuinely enriching experiences. “We worked hard to design a product that presents new experiences thanks to its innovative technologies, while at the same time blending seamlessly in with the user’s furniture and other décor items,” added Bang. “We obtained a lot of inspiration from the space usages, furniture choices and trending objet d’arts we came across during this initial design process.”

(From left) Jigwang Kim, Sungil Bang and Junpyo Kim, the designers at Samsung Electronics’ Visual Display Business

What might be a user’s biggest reason for purchasing a projector? Perhaps so that they can enjoy media more vibrantly on a larger screen, or to add a subtle piece of interior décor flair to a space they otherwise don’t want to place a large TV in. The Premiere’s design team paid close attention to such thinking when developing The Premiere, ensuring that its exterior wouldn’t overwhelm the space it is placed in wherever that may be. “The simplistic design of The Premiere doesn’t stand out too much as an interior décor piece since it naturally blends into the space,” explained Jigwang Kim. “Users can enjoy unparalleled immersive experiences when enjoying content displayed on an entire wall.”

The designers worked diligently on The Premiere’s silhouette to ensure that the projector is able to blend harmoniously into its surroundings as opposed to standing out. The no-frills elements it is composed of, including its round outline and slim lines, complete its overall sleek and soft design. “The projector is able to match other components a user might have nearby, such as a table or a vase, so it’s perfect for those who enjoy minimalistic interior décor,” suggested Jigwang Kim.

Innovative Features Designed for User Comfort

Product design choices are always ultimately made for the user so that they can enjoy their product anytime, anywhere. Due to the common perception that typical projectors can require laborious installation as a certain amount of distance is required between the wall and the projector, as well as the space limitations this can cause, Samsung implemented ultra-short focal point triple laser beam technology. This technology allows The Premiere’s users to enjoy a 4K video up to 330.2cm in size even when the projector is placed as close as 23.8cm to the wall.

Jigwang Kim, Designer at Samsung Electronics’ Visual Display Business

As the world’s first HDR10+ projector, The Premiere offers a maximum brightness of 2,800 ANSI lumens. The Premiere also delivers a 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio, meaning that the projector is able to express all the subtle contrasts and detailing in darker images. Furthermore, “the projector comes with Acoustic Beam speakers that provide deep, 3-dimensional, room-filling sound without the need for any separate speakers,” added Jigwang Kim.

Another leading feature of The Premiere is its smart hub, which allows users to watch all kinds of content and media – requiring only an Internet connection. “The Premiere allows the user to enjoy what they want hassle-free, as there’s no need to connect separate devices to it. It is also connected to SmartThings, so users can monitor and operate their smart home appliances directly from their projector.”

A Stand-Out Design That Blends Seamlessly Thanks to Sophisticated Materials

As opposed to being a hard, cold-looking home appliance, The Premiere has been designed to provide warmth so as to seamlessly blend in to any domestic space. A stand-out feature of its design is the material choice – the design team opted to cover the product with a premium fabric in order to give the projector its warmth and sophistication. “This fabric encompasses a subtle abundance of colors and sophisticated weaving – it is in fact often used for premium brands’ sofas, chairs and other fabric items,” noted Junpyo Kim. “The projector achieves congruity with the space in which it is placed because it has been carefully designed to go well with furniture items.”

However, it wasn’t as simple as it might appear for the design team to be able to fit The Premiere with this premium fabric finish. Since such materials are traditionally used for furniture, the fabric had been designed for a different purpose. “The fabric’s weave structure is denser than other fabrics, meaning that it would affect the sound quality if it were to cover the projector’s speakers,” noted Junpyo Kim. “While this brought about challenges during the design stage, we didn’t want to give up on the uniquely warm and sturdy appearance this fabric provided. Therefore, we increased the aperture ratio of the woven fabric in order to maintain its characteristics while also maintaining optimum sound quality.”

Junpyo Kim, Designer at Samsung Electronics’ Visual Display Business

If you are thinking of transforming your space into a movie theater with truly immersive experiences, or a concert hall full of music – or even a stadium during a sports match, why not try out The Premiere, a projector capable of completely transforming the ambience of the room where it’s placed with ease.

Samsung Electronics is further expanding its HDR10+ streaming content offering with the addition of Google Play Movies to the services that support its next-generation picture-quality technology.

Google Play Movies, the video streaming service operated by Google, started to support HDR10+ content in July this year. The HDR10+ service is now available on Samsung Smart TV in 117 countries including North America, Europe and Korea.

Users can now enjoy high-resolution HDR10+ 4K HDR content on the Google Play Movies, with numerous HDR10+ titles available such as Joker, Aquaman, Wonder Woman, Shazam!, and Crazy Rich Asians. Google Play Movies plans to support HDR10+ technology on other additional platforms in the future as well.

HDR10+, which is the HDR industry standard led by Samsung Electronics, brings consumers perfect picture quality experience by optimizing brightness and contrast scene by scene for enhanced three-dimensional videos and accurate color expression.

Samsung Electronics formed HDR10+ LLC (HDR10+ technology joint venture) in 2017 and started to engage in certification programs in 2018.

Google Play Movies’s support for HDR10+ is expected to accelerate the expansion of the HDR10+ standard alliance, which already has 108 partners worldwide.

“We are pleased to expand partnerships with the top global streaming providers,” said Younghun Choi, Executive Vice President and Head of R&D team, Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “We will continue to strengthen the leadership of our HDR standard and lead the innovation in TV technology in the global market.”

In the two years that have passed since its introduction, HDR10+ has not only been revolutionizing the home entertainment market but has also debuted on a variety of other devices, including smartphones.  Bill Mandel, Vice President of Samsung Research America’s Digital Media Solutions Lab, sat down with Samsung Newsroom to provide an update on how far HDR10+ has come since 2017.

Building a HDR10+ Ecosystem

The biggest innovation for HDR10+ since its introduction in 2017 has been the expansion of the types of devices that can support the revolutionary picture technology, as well as the number of partners that have adopted it.

Over the past year, the number of HDR10+ certification program adopters has tripled, including many TV makers and various ultra-high-definition (UHD) device and System on Chip (SoC) makers. As Mandel affirms, the technology has become crucial to providing the best possible big screen television experience. “The additional picture information that comes with HDR10+ enables the TV processor to best recreate the color tones, brightness and contrast details with the highest precision and respect for the creative intent,” he notes. “Every scene and frame of a viewer’s content is delivered to the highest possible quality on larger screens thanks to HDR10+ and QLED TV processors.”

Samsung’s US-based Digital Media Solutions Lab are constantly aware that, just as the number of HDR10+-certified devices is constantly growing, so is the amount of content available. “We develop technologies like HDR10+ to be stable over a long time so that we can ensure we offer consistency across all available picture qualities as well as synergy between content producers and the viewing ecosystem,” explains Mandel of their development process, “and we work to provide a roadmap to enable the industry to develop and grow with these and other new video tools and enhancements.”

Providing High Picture Quality Across the Board

Back in 2017, Samsung partnered with 20^th Century Fox and Panasonic to create a logo and certification program that allows displays to be certified for having HDR10+ implementation. Since then, many more displays and much more content have been developed to support HDR10+ by a wide range of partners and collaborators who see the benefits this picture technology has to offer viewing quality.

“Device adopters see the picture quality benefit to HDR with HDR10+, service providers are finding that they can easily update their existing HDR services, and content providers are finding they can achieve greater consistency of quality across a wider variety of televisions,” comments Mandel on the path HDR10+ has forged in the industry. “Recently, at the Samsung Developer Conference in San Jose, we showcased samples of HDR10+ across a variety of devices including mobile, tablets and TVs to many interested developers.”

Looking to the future, Mandel notes that HDR10+ is set to revolutionize not only TV viewing experiences for users, but potentially also cinematic experiences. “Starting with HDR10+ technologies, we are currently working to understand the needs of filmmakers, post-production facilities and studios in order to help post-production workflows and future generations of displays provide even more capabilities and options to consumers and the media industry.”

The Most Vivid Viewing Experience Yet

What sets HDR10+ apart is that it has been designed to reproduce images faithfully by taking advantage of the brightness, darkness and contrast elements of content paired with the performance range of a viewer’s television. Thanks to its advanced tone mapping technology, HDR10+ is able to better reproduce HDR content with the appearance as intended by the creator. “Not only can users enjoy this quality on HDR10+-certified devices, but HDR10+ technology can enable any TV, even with differing sets of performance characteristics, to provide an immersive HDR content experience that fully showcases the care creatives put into their HDR source masters,” explains Mandel.

Mandel recommends dimming the lights in your home when watching HDR10+ content to make the most of the experience. “HDR10+ works with all the picture modes available on Samsung TVs,” adds Mandel, “and our ‘Movie’ picture mode has been optimized by the picture quality engineering team to deliver colors and cinematic texture as envisaged by the original content creators.” Mandel encourages consumers to look for HDR10+ support when considering their next device, “so that they can be sure they are getting the best HDR viewing opportunity possible.”

HDR10+, along with 8K resolution, stands at the forefront of display technology innovation. “Samsung is committed to continuously expanding the capabilities offered by TV screens,” affirms Mandel. “Through industry collaboration with technology initiatives such as HDR10+ and partners throughout the media ecosystem, we are continuously striving to deliver the best possible viewing experience to consumers now as well as in the future.”

Samsung Electronics announced today its HDR10+ ecosystem expansion to 45 industry partners and the construction of a new certification center in China. The new partnerships with companies, from online streaming and content services to semiconductor industry, will bring more true-to-life picture quality content to viewers and also expand the impact of HDR10+ technology across different market segments.

Last June, Samsung Electronics launched the HDR10+ certification and logo program in partnership with 20th Century Fox and Panasonic. HDR10+ is Samsung’s next-generation standard technology for picture processing, which optimizes brightness levels and contrast for each scene, making bright areas brighter and dark areas darker to deliver a lifelike viewing experience.

Thanks to Samsung’s new partnerships with content providers, consumers can soon access more content in vivid and reality-like colors. Rakuten TV, a European online streaming service, will begin offering HDR10+ content in the first half of next year. One of the largest among CIS and Eastern Europe OTT/VOD services, MEGOGO is currently finishing its HDR10+ licensing process, making its adoption of HDR10+ official, and planning to release HDR10+ contents on its platform, viewable on all Samsung Smart TV devices. ARSPRO, based in Moscow, is another production studio that has implemented HDR10+ technology, including the use of dynamic metadata. It has successfully carried out the remastering of the first several series of programming in HDR10+. On December 3^rd of this year, the largest Russian OTT/VOD service ivi also presented five European series in HDR10+ to Samsung Smart TV users for the first time in Russia and CIS region.

“We continually work on improving the video quality for our users. And we are proud to be the first Russian OTT/VOD service to maximize the opportunities available through Samsung QLED TVs and give a chance to our subscribers to view the contents in this new better-quality format. We plan to expand our HDR10+ collection because our focus is on providing the highest quality content to the viewers, using all the features of Samsung TVs,” said Irina Grandel, Business Development Director at ivi.

In 2017, Samsung also launched its premium video streaming service with Amazon, making Prime Video the first streaming service to deliver all 4K (UHD) videos in HDR10+. In 2018, Amazon integrated HDR10+ support into the Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K, which launched in October. Another HDR10+ partner Warner Bros. Home Entertainment has created over seventy HDR10+ compatible titles so far and plans to have over 100 titles available for digital distribution in HDR10+ by early next year.

Samsung is also building partnerships with major smartphone chip manufacturers. Qualcomm, a U.S. semiconductor and telecommunications equipment maker and a member of the HDR10+ alliance, recently announced that HDR10+ will be supported on its new chipset, Snapdragon 855. Arm, U.K.’s innovation-leading company in mobile technology that has successfully collaborated with Samsung System LSI, will also join the HDR10+ network, further growing HDR10+’s influence in the mobile category.

In addition, Samsung plans to build a new HDR10+ center in China with TIRT, a national testing and inspection center for the Chinese consumer electronics, in December. The center is designed to help Chinese TV manufacturers, including Hisense, TCL and Konka to access the certification procedure and in turn accelerate the expansion of the HDR10+ ecosystem. The China center follows the opening of certification centers built in Korea, Japan and the U.S. earlier this year.

“With HDR emerging as one of the most important technologies for ultra-high picture quality, Samsung’s HDR10+ format is gaining recognition,” said Hyogun Lee, Executive Vice President of the Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “HDR10+ has already been well-received by major companies across a variety of industries. Samsung will continue to build on this, solidifying our HDR standard technology leadership and maintaining our presence in the global TV market.”

The company recently received the official HDR10+ logo certification for its 2018 Premium UHD and QLED TVs, including QLED 8K – a testament to the displays’ ability to produce lifelike images that depict content as creators intended. Samsung also continues to forge partnerships that are delivering premium viewing experiences to more consumers’ homes.

Samsung Newsroom recently sat down with Yeong-Taeg Kim, Vice President of Samsung Research America’s Digital Media Solutions Lab, to learn more about what the company is doing to expand this technology, and offer more people access to the best HDR content available.

What Is HDR10+?

 Introduced in 2017, HDR10+ reproduces colors with a level of accuracy that was previously impossible to achieve.

With most TVs, there’s an inevitable gap between the dynamic range of colors that the display is capable of producing, and the depicted content’s true colors. Traditionally, in order to approximate the appearance HDR, TVs with limited dynamic range have utilized a process known as ‘tone mapping’ to amplify images’ color. However, unlike previous HDR10 iterations, which utilized static tone mapping, in which color enhancement is uniform from scene to scene, HDR10+ employs dynamic tone mapping, which allows scenes to be optimized individually.

In a nutshell, the technology enables TVs to preserve creators’ intent in dark scenes and produce brighter highlights, adding a sense of depth to images that makes content seem more realistic and immersive. It works by embedding content with dynamic metadata, which creates an optimized tone-mapping curve based on a mathematical concept known as a Bézier curve. As Kim explained, “While the concept may be somewhat complex, the results are clear: the image optimization creates rich contrast that brings content’s color to life through the beauty of math.”

How It All Started

 It all started with a proprietary tone-mapping technology that was developed by the Digital Media Solutions Lab back in 2016.

The tone-mapping algorithm was unique as it was the first in the industry to automatically optimize colors in each scene on displays with limited dynamic range. While the team had originally planned to use the technology as a picture quality differentiator for future products, later that year, when the idea of dynamic tone mapping being the next big thing for HDR10 was the subject of intense debate within the Society of Motion Picture & Television Engineers (SMPTE), the team decided to utilize the technology to develop a new industry standard. A standard that would accommodate device manufacturers, studios and chipmakers, and offer each the freedom they need to innovate.

“We didn’t set out to build an industry standard from the beginning,” Kim explained. “It was the result of having the right technology in our hands at a time when it was most needed. We knew that by opening it up to the industry, we could accelerate the adoption of a ground-breaking innovation that would truly do justice to creators and their content.”

The Challenges

Despite the team’s optimism, creating a new standard was a challenge at first. Even with headquarters and managements’ support at the time, some within the company were skeptical as to whether Samsung would be able to create a viable industry standard that could be adopted by studios, chipmakers and device manufacturers.

“It was a tough call, but we all understood the significance of creating a new standard,” said Kim. “There was a lot of debate, but everyone came around when they realized that by creating a new standard, we’d also be keeping our promise to our consumers. If the industry relied on just one standard, it would be difficult to update previous HDR10 products.”

The biggest technological challenges laid in creating a mathematical curve that could be used as a base for tone mapping each scene, and figuring out a way to parameterize it into a set of data that could serve as a universal descriptor to represent the tone mapping behavior for a given scene. The mathematical curve not only needed to be optimized for every possible scene, it also needed to be flexible enough to do so. It was therefore important that the team find a curve that would cater to the way studios tend to map their tones: fragmented.

Creating a New Standard

After months of research and multiple simulations, the team, led by Dr. Li Tao, finally landed on a mathematical curve that was flexible enough to do the job.

The idea was to mimic the way that studios edit scenes. The Bézier curve turned out to be the perfect choice for replicating fragmentation, which meant that it would represent creators’ intentions more precisely. However, before they could utilize the curve as a base for creating dynamic metadata through mathematical optimization, the team would have to modify it first. It was at this point that they had the innovative idea to enhance its flexibility by transforming the two-dimensional curve to a one-dimensional data set.

With this increased flexibility came the ability to create optimized tone-mapping curves for each scene. By combining this with an algorithm that automatically transforms each curve into metadata, the team created a powerful tool that would allow Samsung’s TVs to offer consumers truly immersive viewing experiences.

Using the analogy of a master chef sharing a prized recipe, Kim explained the technology’s potential to change the way consumers experience content. “Imagine a chef’s culinary masterpiece, turned into a recipe for the ordinary household kitchen,” said Kim. “Imagine that the recipe is so precise that anyone can use it to create a near-perfect dish. Now, imagine a tool that writes this recipe automatically – instead of the chef – and for all types of cuisines. Finally, imagine that, once they buy the ingredients, the recipe becomes available to anyone.

“Samsung has not only created the standard for writing the ‘recipe,’ but the tool as well,” Kim continued. “But in order for this to happen, we need the ‘chefs’ (the studios), the ‘groceries’ (content providers) and the ‘cooks’ at home (device and chip manufacturers) to all work together.”

An Expanding Ecosystem

Since its official launch last year, HDR10+ has seen rapid expansion, spurred by Samsung and its partners’ decisions to (1) make the technology available to chip and TV manufacturers royalty-free, and (2) make the HDR10+ platform and metadata freely available to content companies, as well as UHD Blu-ray player and set-top box manufacturers.

As a result, we’re witnessing the establishment of a strong ecosystem of HDR10+ offerings, with the power to revolutionize home entertainment. In order to deliver immersive, lifelike visuals to more consumers’ living rooms, Samsung has been hard at work forging HDR10+ partnerships – spanning the worlds of cinema, software and device manufacturing – that are expediting the technology’s widespread adoption.

As Kim explained, the HDR10+ platform was designed to support seamless adoption without substantial economic or technological hurdles. “We have been collaborating with third-party software developers, including Colorfront and Blackmagic Design, among others, as well as encoding-system companies to embed HDR10+,” said Kim. “We’ve demonstrated the quality of HDR10+’s performance, and emphasized the economic aspects of implementation. Compared to HDR10 or other competitors, there are no additional costs associated with implementing HDR10+ for content creation, nor are there additional hardware costs for HDR10+ displays. The new platform’s contents are retroactively compatible with existing HDR10 devices.”

Samsung has established exciting partnerships with device, chip and projector manufacturers that will introduce more consumers to HDR10+’s true-to-life picture quality. Notable examples include V-Silicon (formerly Sigma Designs), and TP Vision. The company has also forged and expanded partnerships with leading film studios and content service providers including ivi, Russia’s largest online video service provider, Amazon Prime Video, and Warner Bros.

As noted by Kim, with more HDR10+ TVs, SoCs (System on Chip) and AVR and projector manufacturers set to join the fold soon, and more and more HDR10+ content coming down the pipeline, the official HDR10+ logo certification marks an important milestone, and represents the beginning of a new era for picture quality.

“The introduction of the HDR10+ certification logo represents the groundwork that we are setting for the ultra-high picture quality TV market,” said Kim. “Utilizing our leading technology and expertise, we will continue to extend our valuable partnerships while maintaining our commitment to providing consumers with the best HDR content possible.”

(From left to right) Back: Chenguang Liu, Dr. Yeong-Taeg Kim, Pradeep Nagesh, Seongnam Oh,  Front: Suzie Hyun, Li Tao

Available in a choice of 65, 75, 82 and 85-inch models, the new TV combines the market’s highest resolution with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that optimizes content for 8K presentation—producing truly lifelike images and sound, and enabling users to enjoy much more immersive viewing experiences.

Samsung has been the world’s number one TV manufacturer for 12 years running thanks to a commitment to setting new standards for picture quality and immersion. With the unveiling of QLED 8K, the company has once again raised the bar for both.

Why 8K Matters

Large-screen TVs (measuring 65 inches or wider) are becoming more and more common, with over 11 million sold just last year and, according to leading market research firm IHS Markit^*, approximately 16 million expected to be sold this year. The market for ultra-large screen TVs (measuring 75 inches or wider) is also predicted to almost double by the year 2020.

The larger TVs get, the more important their resolution becomes, as details portrayed on a bigger screen require more pixels—the thousands (or millions) of incredibly small dots that make up the images you see on your TV screen—to clearly define them. This means that ideally, in order to provide a level of detail that really blows viewers away, a large-screen TV’s resolution, or total number of pixels, should be above the previous high mark of 4K (3,840 x 2,160).

An 8K TV features a resolution of 7,680 x 4,320 pixels, which means roughly 8,000 pixels are packed into each horizontal line of the screen. At this level of pixel density, the individual pixels composing an image become imperceptible to the human eye—even when viewed up close. Samsung’s QLED 8K features over 30 million pixels in total, which adds depth and detail to content displayed on the TV’s expansive screen, and makes objects appear that much more realistic.

If history is any indication, consumers won’t have to wait long for immersive 8K content to become the new normal. It took just less than five years for UHD (Ultra-High Definition) TVs to overtake FHD (Full HD) models in global sales, and IHS Markit predicts that sales of 8K TVs will quadruple over the next few years.

How Resolution Affects Realism

Put simply, the higher a TV’s resolution, the sharper its picture quality, and the more realistic its images will seem. Samsung’s QLED 8K features a resolution that’s 16 times greater than FHD and four times greater than a 4K UHD TV. This allows the TV to produce lifelike visuals that accurately depict details in a scene or image which would likely go unnoticed on a lower-resolution TV.

As the resolution of an image increases, it also creates a sense of depth that tricks our eyes into believing that the objects within appear more immersive. When viewing high-resolution content on a wide screen, the wider our field of view, the more immersive the content we’re watching becomes, and the more “present” we feel within it.

In other words, QLED 8K’s high-res visuals and wide screen offer viewers a new level of immersion—one that allows them to feel like they’re in the heart of the action when viewing a favorite movie, or enjoying a front row seat when watching the big game.

How Samsung’s Innovating with 8K

Samsung’s QLED TVs have a history of fostering brilliant visuals that predates the line’s jump to ultra-high-resolution 8K.

For a start, each QLED TV is certified to deliver 100 percent color volume, which means accurate colors at any brightness level. This helps the TVs express subtle details in both bright and dark scenes, and produce vibrant HDR (high dynamic range) images that bring content to life.

Because contrast ratio, like resolution, can greatly affect a TV’s ability to produce images that pop off the screen, QLED 8K also features Samsung’s brightness-optimizing Q HDR 8K technology. This innovative technology maximizes contrast ratio to make images appear clearer and more three dimensional, analyzing an image’s object(s) and background in order to accentuate fine details. The TV’s Direct Full Array Elite technology enhances contrast even further, in addition to offering precise backlighting controls.

QLED 8K’s combination of perfect color volume, optimized contrast and support for the Samsung-spearheaded HDR10+ open standard allows it to foster truly cinematic viewing experiences. The TV’s 4,000-nit peak brightness matches the content mastering standard for major film and TV studios’ Blu-ray releases, while its HDR10+ technology leverages dynamic metadata to optimize contrast and colors from scene to scene to ensure that content is displayed in the manner that filmmakers intended.

And it’s not just films and shows that benefit from crystal clear 8K. The TV’s built-in Ambient Mode allows users to enhance their home’s décor with beautiful images when the TV is turned off. Photos and artworks look flawless when displayed at 8K resolution, and the TV’s boundless design creates the sense that the image on display is melting into the wall behind it.

What’s More: 8K AI Upscaling Technology Expands 8K TV Market

To enable users to enjoy as much 8K content as possible, the TV also features Samsung’s proprietary Quantum Processor 8K. This innovative addition recognizes content—whether it’s transmitted via a streaming service, set-top box, HDMI, USB, or even mobile mirroring— and automatically upscales its sound and images into near-8K quality using machine-learning 8K AI Upscaling technology. This enables consumers to view just about any movie or show on any channel in crisp 8K, regardless of the video’s native resolution or method of transmission.

The upscaling technology is compatible with all types of content, including standard definition, HD, FHD and UHD, but its optimization is most dramatic when the original source is a 4K UHD image. The built-in AI upscaling feature analyzes the relationship between low- and high-resolution video, and uses this insight to apply millions of upscaling algorithms that accentuate details, add sharpness to edges, and eliminate compression noise for streamed videos.

The feature expertly restores content’s texture and detail to allow you to view your show or movie as it was meant to be seen. The resulting images are so vivid and detailed that you’ll feel like you could reach out and touch the objects and characters within them.

QLED 8K’s AI Upscaling technology also includes a sound optimization function, which automatically analyzes content’s sound from scene to scene to foster the most immersive experience possible. When watching a football game, for instance, when a player makes a big play, the sound may amplify the audience’s cheers to recreate the excitement of being there in person. After the play, the TV may emphasize the commentators’ voices as they break down what just happened. There’s no need to raise the volume to hear what’s being said; QLED 8K will do it for you.

Going forward, TVs will be evaluated based on their ability to enhance viewers’ immersion to the point that they feel like they’re experiencing a scene, game or moment firsthand. The launch of Samsung 8K AI Upscaling technology brings us closer than ever to achieving this goal of blurring the line between reality and reproduction.

*IHS Markit TV Sets Market Tracker – Forecast Q1 2018, Information is not an endorsement of Samsung. Any reliance on these results is at the third party’s own risk. Visit technology.ihs.com for more details. 

20^th Century Fox, Panasonic Corporation and Samsung Electronics announced today 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+. Together, the three companies 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, color, 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 theater.”

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.”

This year’s IFA attendees are encouraged to visit the Samsung Electronics and Panasonic booths to learn more about HDR10+ technology.

20^th Century Fox, Panasonic and Samsung will announce further details on the license program along with a demonstration of HDR10+ technology at CES 2018.

About Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment

Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, LLC (TCFHE) is a recognized global industry leader and a subsidiary of Twentieth Century Fox Film. TCFHE is the worldwide marketing, sales and distribution company for all Fox film and television programming, acquisitions and original productions as well as all third party distribution partners on DVD, Blu-ray, 4K Ultra HD, Digital HD, and VOD (video-on-demand). Each year TCFHE introduces hundreds of new and newly enhanced products, which it services to retail outlets and digital stores throughout the world.

About Panasonic

Panasonic Corporation is a worldwide leader in the development of diverse electronics technologies and solutions for customers in the consumer electronics, housing, automotive, and B2B businesses. Celebrating its 100th anniversary in 2018, the company has expanded globally and now operates 495 subsidiaries and 91 associated companies worldwide, recording consolidated net sales of 7.343 trillion yen for the year ended March 31, 2017. Committed to pursuing new value through innovation across divisional lines, the company uses its technologies to create a better life and a better world for its customers. To learn more about Panasonic: http://www.panasonic.com/global.