First Off, Let’s Talk About HDR
Before we get into anything, we first need to talk about HDR, which stands for High Dynamic Range. You might be familiar with this term when it comes to your device’s cameras but it’s a bit different when talking about display tech and the content that is expected to show on compatible displays.
If your smartphone has an HDR screen — against having an SDR, or Standard Dynamic Range, screen — it means that it is built to display a higher level of brightness, or luminance, than a regular screen. In fact, similar to HDR with cameras, this means that there’s a bigger gap (or range) between the darkest and the lightest parts of the image. Your true blacks on an AMOLED panel are as dark as the panel itself (since the pixel is switched off) and with HDR, the whites can go even higher than before; hence, a high dynamic range.
The luminance is only part of what makes an HDR screen special though. The other aspect is the color depth of the screen. You must have seen screens that boast of being able to produce 1 billion colors and that’s close to what we’re talking about. An SDR screen typically supports up to 8-bit color, but HDR pushes that up to at least 10-bit, which equals the 1 billion colors we were talking about!
So, HDR, in summary, is all about more brightness and more colors, in the aim to make images and videos more lifelike.
HDR10, The Most Popular Open Standard For HDR
HDR10, where the 10 stands for 10-bit color depth, is the most common standard for HDR and it is open to everyone to use. HDR10 demonstrates the basic criteria we talked about before, by having higher brightness and more colors than a standard display. However, it uses static metadata.
Now, what this means is that when you play an HDR10 video, all the color calibration and brightness settings are tied to the video itself. Those settings stay the same throughout the entire video, which means that some scenes might suffer. For instance, if the color and brightness settings were designed to optimize the brighter, more colorful scenes in the movies, darker scenes might suffer.
It’s like using the same EQ settings for all your music, regardless of the genre!
HDR10+, Proprietary, And Improves On Regular HDR10
HDR10+ fixes the only thing that’s wrong with HDR10 and swaps out the static metadata for dynamic metadata. The major advantage here is that the color and brightness settings can be calibrated to as fine a level as a frame-by-frame basis.
This means that every scene you watch is properly calibrated as appropriate. Dark scenes are as gloomy as they should be and the scene where the character has an acid trip is as colorful as the director intended it to be. It’s like your EQ settings being changed dynamically based on the kind of music you’re listening to.
However, HDR10+ is a proprietary standard, which means that manufacturers need to pay an annual fee to be able to produce devices that are HDR10+ certified. Most modern flagships support at least HDR10+, for instance, the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra.
Dolby Vision, Proprietary, And As Good As It Gets
Dolby Vision is proprietary, unsurprisingly, as we are all very familiar with Dolby. It is relatively similar to HDR10+ since it also supports dynamic metadata. However, Dolby Vision supports up to 12-bit color depth, which means there’s the possibility for a ridiculous 68 billion colors to be produced.
Dolby Vision is proprietary though, so whenever you see a smartphone manufacturer tote it on the spec sheet, you know they have to pay royalties to be able to use the technology and the certification. It explains why many brands proudly show off their Dolby Vision certification. The Honor Magic 6 Pro and the Motorola Razr 50 Ultra both have Dolby Vision support.
