▲ 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 colours 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 colours 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 optimise 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.

London – December 23, 2018 – Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. 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 the 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 optimises 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 colours. 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 the 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 maximise the opportunities available through Samsung QLED TVs and give our subscribers to view the contents in this new improved 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 US 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, an 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 center in China follows the opening of certification centers built in Korea, Japan and the US 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.”

Available in a choice of 65, 75, and 85-inch models, the new TV combines the market’s highest resolution with Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology that optimises 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^[2], 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 favourite 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 colour volume^[3], which means accurate colours 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-optimising Q HDR 8K technology. This innovative technology maximises contrast ratio to make images appear clearer and more three dimensional, analysing 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 colour volume, optimised 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 optimise contrast and colours 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^[4] 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 recognises 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 optimisation is most dramatic when the original source is a 4K UHD image. The built-in AI upscaling feature analyses 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 optimisation function, which automatically analyses 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 emphasise 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.

[1] Samsung QLED 8K will not support upscaling for PC, game and analogue content are not subject to 8K upscaling

[2] 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. 

[3] QLED TVs have received verification from world-class testing and certification association, Verband Deutscher Elektrotechniker (VDE), for its ability to produce 100 percent colour volume

[4] Some features of Ambient Mode require a compatible Android or iOS phone and sufficient space around the TV to operate; it will have varying results on complex wall designs, patterns, and/or unusual colours