The royalty-free HDR10+ standard promotes vibrant and vivid visuals that bring us closer than ever to true-to-life images. Samsung’s recent announcement of partnerships with Panasonic and 20^th Century Fox will expand the platform’s ecosystem of compatible technologies, eventually making such immersive visuals standard fare.

But how exactly does HDR10+ establish this new standard, and what will the technology’s advancement mean for content creators, device manufacturers, and the future of home entertainment? To answer those questions, let’s take a closer look at how Samsung optimized the platform to offer consumers a more advanced viewing experience.

HDR10+: The Next Step in HDR Technologies

It wasn’t too long ago that HDR represented the pinnacle of picture quality. HDR provided greater depth, brightness and color accuracy – whiter whites, blacker blacks, and a wider color gamut – than standard dynamic range (SDR) displays. Innovations such as Samsung’s Quantum dot technology further advanced picture quality by introducing more accurate color expression and higher brightness levels.

Since its introduction, the second major advancement in HDR technologies, HDR10, has been the standard throughout the industry. The technology is widely used and certified by the UHD Alliance – an association of Hollywood movie studios, content distributors, tech companies and device manufacturers that was formed to strengthen and grow the UHD ecosystem.

HDR10+, the latest and most advanced HDR technology, builds upon the strengths of previous HDR platforms to further enhance the viewing experience. HDR10+ better channels content’s intrinsic dynamic range (the ratio of light and darkness) to produce truer images that appear brighter and more colorful – and therefore more detailed and realistic than with conventional HDR on a wider array of displays. Whereas previous HDR10 iterations utilized static tone mapping, wherein color enhancement is uniform from scene to depicted scene, HDR10+ employs dynamic tone mapping to maximize each scene individually. The results are visuals that feature optimal colors, contrast and brightness, and create a viewing experience that allows you to see a show or film precisely as its producers intended.

Raising the Bar for UHD with an Open HDR10+ Ecosystem

Samsung’s decision to introduce HDR10+ as an open-source, royalty-free platform, which anyone may utilize to create compatible devices and content, underlines a larger commitment to raising the bar for UHD video.

The fact that HDR10+ is open and royalty-free makes the technology an attractive option for a variety of partners – from movie studios and filmmakers, to TV and device manufacturers – and will ultimately hasten its adoption as the new standard with which to create innovative digital devices and dynamic content.

In addition to incorporating support for HDR10+ in its complete range of 2017 UHD TVs, including its new QLED TV line, Samsung is also actively working with some of the world’s leading producers of premium content to make HDR10+ the filmmaking standard.

This past April, Amazon became Samsung’s first official HDR10+ content partner. Soon, the company will offer viewers around the world gripping HDR10+ content available to stream through its widely popular Prime Video service. Also, on September 1, the first day of IFA 2017, Samsung will host the QLED & HDR10+ Summit at Berlin’s Waldorf Astoria Hotel, where the company will lay out its plans to advance HDR10+ adoption throughout Europe.

By making HDR10+ technology widely available, and forging partnerships that will lead to more visually captivating content, Samsung hopes to make immersive, true-to-life home entertainment the new normal for consumers around the world.

Recent surveys conducted by Samsung Electronics on the determinants of consumers’ purchasing decisions when buying a new television show that consumers’ priorities have changed noticeably over the past few years.

Smart Function – A Significant Factor in Choosing a Television

In the past, picture quality, price and screen size were the foremost factors considered by consumers when buying a television. According to a survey on the usage and attitude (U&A) of American consumers conducted by Samsung Electronics in 2014 and 2016, the significance of the aforementioned factors decreased whereas the importance of smart function doubled from 15.1 percent to 29.6 percent within the two years.

On a separate survey* conducted in June 2015, American consumers were asked the question “Why do you want to upgrade your television?” The options ‘picture quality’ and ‘smart function’ tied at 46 percent, followed by ‘screen size’.

Are Smart TVs Truly Smart?

Starting in 2010, Samsung has made various attempts to make the television smarter by incorporating features like a TV app store, search and web surfing, multi-screen capabilities and even support for shopping. Today, however, an average of 2.8 devices such as set-top boxes, game consoles and blue-ray players are connected to the television, while the average consumer has about four remote controls lying around their living room. Such an environment hinders the user experience, and leads consumers to wonder if smart TVs are, in fact, truly smart.

Rethinking Smart TV

These days, countless live TV and Over-The-Top (OTT) companies broadcast content. In fact, the number of television content and application partners for Samsung alone exceeds 1,000.

So, what exactly makes a television smart? Through a project called EDEN, Samsung decided to rethink the answer to this question.

“Whereas the television used to be a device that changed broadcast signals into an image on a screen, today’s TV is a device that connects various multimedia sources,” said Sangsook Han, Vice President of Visual Display Business at Samsung Electronics. “Thus, we have come to the conclusion that a true smart television should be able to provide a range of content in a quick and easy manner and allow users to enjoy supreme picture quality.”

3.3-Fold Increase in Smart TV App Usage

Samsung has improved the smart TV by enabling it to automatically recognize connected devices and making it possible to control these devices via one integrated remote control. Searching and accessing content has also been facilitated through a clean, well-organized smart television menu that displays content and apps in a single row at the bottom of the screen.

Since incorporating the concept of ‘Single Experience’ to our TVs, the usage of Samsung Smart TV apps and services has increased 3.3-fold, and the frequency of controlling set-top boxes with an integrated remote control has increased 1.6-fold.

What’s Next?

But this is only the beginning, as Samsung is planning to develop technologies to enhance the smart television even further.

“We will extend the user experience by going beyond using a smartphone as a remote control to select and display content on TV,” said Han. “We will strive to enhance the Samsung Smart TV ecosystem – which already exceeds 100 million devices – by intensifying voice recognition and artificial intelligence, utilizing big data, and more.”

*Respondents were allowed to select more than one answer choice

Samsung Electronics, a world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, announced its newest 12 megapixel (Mp) image sensor for smartphones, which will elevate the quality of mobile phone pictures. Already in mass production, this 1.4μm-pixel-based image sensor is equipped with Dual Pixel technology that has been reserved for DSLR cameras. The technology enables rapid auto-focus for fast photo shooting while producing premium image quality on mobile devices, even in low light situations.

“With 12 million pixels working as a phase detection auto-focus (PDAF) agent, the new image sensor brings professional auto-focusing performance to a mobile device,” said Ben K. Hur, Vice President of Marketing, System LSI Business at Samsung Electronics. “Consumers will be able to capture their daily events and precious moments instantly on a smartphone as the moments unfold, regardless of lighting conditions.”

Samsung’s new image sensor with Dual Pixel technology employs two photodiodes located on the left and right halves of a pixel, while a conventional image sensor dedicates less than five percent of its pixels, with one photodiode each that converts light particles into measurable photocurrent for phase detection. As each and every pixel of the Dual Pixel image sensor is capable of detecting phase differences of perceived light, significantly faster auto-focus has become possible. With such groundbreaking improvements, the image sensor ensures clear and sharp images especially for moving objects even in poor lighting conditions.

The image sensor has also adopted Samsung’s ISOCELL technology, which isolates the photodiodes in each pixel with a physical wall to further reduce color cross talk, maximizing the image sensor’s performance.

For top-of-the-line performance while keeping the size to a minimum, the new image sensor is built with cutting-edge chip-stacking technology. The Dual Pixel image sensor stacks a 65 nanometer (nm) sensor and 28nm logic chip together to deliver outstanding photo-taking experiences in today’s sleek smartphones.

Such explosive market response is largely due to the fact that UHD TVs deliver more life-like images with magnificent detail – a level of precision only comparable to what we can see with the naked eye.

The resolution of UHD TV’s is four-times greater than that of conventional full HD TVs of equal size – hence the name “4K” TVs. The industry regards the creation of UHD as the most revolutionary leap forward in visual technology since the development of full HD nearly a decade ago. However, with such picture quality at stake, it is important to understand the kind of ‘4K’ to look for in “UHD TVs.”

Pixel structure can impact native resolution

A display is comprised of pixels as the smallest unit. Every pixel needs to have all red, green and blue lights for each of them to produce accurate colors. (Red, green and blue lights on together make white; having all of them off makes black)

When these pixels add up, they look something like this:

RGBW is a modified version in which parts of RGB are transformed into white lights. However, not only do the whites in RGBW become holes when representing colors, they also distort the pixel structure, making it very difficult to define the sharp lines that are crucial to UHD. In other words, these white pixels restrict and limit the color palate a TV is capable of showing on its display panel, while diluting the overall picture quality by affecting clarity, brightness and sharpness.

This is what happens:

Because of this phenomenon, Nemko, the Norwegian Board for testing and approval of electrical equipment, concluded that “the resolution of RGBW is inferior to UHD resolution, and has some issues displaying UHD vertical color lines.”

Reproducibility with test patterns (Nemko)

VDE Testing and Certification Institute, a European technical-scientific association, also conducted an independent quality verification test. The results revealed that “with RGBW, there’s a loss of 25 percent clarity with horizontal resolution” and that when conducting a black and white dot test, “RGBW wasn’t capable of displaying the pattern accurately.”

Stricter standards to ensure true UHD images

Industry organizations, including The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and The Digital Europe (DE), recently established clear industry standards and UHD certification programs. Both DE and CEA have clearly defined UHD standards that a pixel must be able to independently reproduce a full range of colors. This means that a pixel is only considered a real pixel if the three primary colors of light – red, green, blue – are included, regardless of additional non-RGB sub pixels.

CEA, which is accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), is made up of members from more than 2,000 companies from the consumer technology industry throughout the U.S. The organization is a trusted source within the consumer electronics industry. DE – which represents the digital technology industry in Europe – is made up of members from some of the world’s largest IT, telecoms and consumer electronics companies and national associations from across Europe. As the #1 TV maker 9 years running, Samsung has acquired UHD certification marks from both DE and CEA for all of its 2015 UHD TV models.

Samsung has been making TVs since the 70s and have strived to offer the best to customers. As a part of this endeavor, Samsung Electronics encourages leaders in the TV industry to commit to an industry-wide effort to deliver the most accurate product information to consumers.

For more information on DE’s UHD certification program, please visit:

http://www.digitaleurope.org/Services/Highdefinitionlogos/UHD.aspx

For more information on CEA’s UHD certification program, please visit:

https://www.ce.org/News/News-Releases/Press-Releases/2014/CEA-Updates-Characteristics-for-Ultra-High-Definit.aspx