Updated: Samsung has since confirmed that its 2020 TVs and older models won't support Netflix's HDR10+ implementation
Samsung Electronics has been somewhat less than enthusiastic about the prospect of its older TVs supporting Netflix’s implementation of HDR10+, raising the prospect that some owners of more dated models might miss out on the High Dynamic Range bonanza.
Last month, Netflix stirred excitement among Samsung TV owners with its announcement that it’s finally rolling out support for the HDR10+ format, which is a royalty-free alternative to the more popular Dolby Vision HDR.
The news raised a lot of hopes because Samsung is alone among the premium TV manufacturers today in that it steadfastly refuses to support Dolby Vision content on its screens, and instead only offers HDR10+.
Like Dolby Vision, HDR10+ analyses the metadata of movies and shows on a scene-by-scene basis, which is different from more static HDR formats like HLG and standard HDR10. The scene-by-scene analysis enables more efficient tone mapping of HDR brightness on each scene, and that means more detail is retained in the brighter and darker areas of the image, making a picture that pops out more.
HDTVTest's Vincent Teoh explains how HDR10+ works in more detail in this video:
Samsung’s refusal to support Dolby Vision has always been one of the biggest complaints from Samsung TV owners, because until recently, most streaming services didn’t offer access to HDR10+ content (although that is changing with both Amazon Prime Video and Apple TV+ introducing some support). A lot of movie makers ignore the format too.
With Netflix onboard, things are beginning to look up for Samsung TV owners, and the company moved quickly to say it will support Netflix’s implementation on its soon-to-launch 2025 TVs and also its 2025 and 2024 computer monitors. What it didn’t say, however, is anything about its TV models from 2024 or earlier.
When pressed on the matter by Techradar, Samsung said it will add “support for additional models in the future”, without being any more specific. So it means that older Samsung TV owners will have to wait, and there is the prospect that some may not ever see it.
In the best case scenario, Samsung will roll out support for its more recent TV models fairly quickly. But given that Samsung is one of the creators and primary supporters of HDR10+, it’s surprising that the company wasn’t more on the ball, preparing for it ahead of Netflix’s announcement.
The problem with these older Samsung TVs is that Netflix’s HDR10+ content is encoded in the AV1-HDR10+ codec, which means that any device that wants to take advantage of it must be compatible with AV1 itself.
Update: Samsung confirmed this is the case in a statement to Techradar: "Netflix uses the AV1 high-efficiency codec for HDR10+ content. The AV1 codec was introduced in late 2020, by which point our 2020 (T models) product range had already been launched. Since codec compatibility is determined at the chipset level, and the AV1 codec was not part of the original hardware design, we are unable to support AV1 – and therefore can’t support HDR10+ on Netflix – on those older models. However support for HDR10+ on Netflix is available from the 2021 product line onwards."
While none of this is a concern for any premium or mid-range TV bought in the last three or four years, the requirement causes problems for older televisions that don’t support AV1. TV makers only really started to embrace AV1 around 2021, so anyone with an earlier model with be out of luck.
