Samsung and Amazon Prime Video have launched a new picture quality standard called HDR10+ Advanced on Prime Video, starting August 2026. Samsung's 2026 TV lineup is the first to support it. The companies are calling it the world's first HDR10+ Advanced streaming experience. (Samsung Newsroom, The Verge)

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, a technology that makes the bright parts of a picture brighter and the dark parts darker, giving you more realistic-looking images. Some HDR systems use what's called dynamic metadata, which means the video carries instructions that tell your TV how to adjust brightness and contrast for each scene, instead of using one setting for the whole movie. HDR10+ Advanced takes this further with two main additions.

First, it carries richer descriptive tags that tell the TV what kind of content is playing, such as Movie, Sports, Animation, News, or General, plus details about lighting, motion, and perspective, according to the standard's FAQ. (HDR10+ FAQ) Second, it uses local tone mapping, meaning it can adjust brightness for different areas of the screen at the same time, rather than applying one adjustment to the whole picture. The standard also includes an "Intelligent Motion Smoothing" mode that adjusts scene by scene, and an "Enhanced Overall Brightness" feature now available to Prime Video customers on Samsung's 2026 TVs. (The Verge, Samsung Newsroom)

The feature set closely mirrors a competing standard called Dolby Vision 2, which also uses detailed per-scene and per-area instructions for better picture quality. The key difference is that Samsung does not pay Dolby's licensing fee for HDR10+ Advanced. Hisense, Philips, and TCL have all announced that their new TVs will support Dolby Vision 2. Peacock and Canal+ are signed on as Dolby Vision 2 content partners, though that content is not yet live and will likely require software updates on supported TVs when it rolls out. (The Verge)

The timing is notable. The announcement arrives just after Disney Plus in Europe briefly lost Dolby Vision support due to a patent dispute, a reminder that which HDR format you can watch is shaped as much by licensing deals and lawsuits as by which technology is better. (The Verge)

Samsung's press release did not specify which Prime Video titles will initially support HDR10+ Advanced or how many titles are included at launch. The gap between the announcement and a concrete content list leaves an open question about how much of Prime Video's HDR library will actually use the enhanced format in the near term. (The Verge)

The partnership between Samsung and Amazon on HDR standards is not new. Prime Video was the first streaming service to implement the original HDR10+ standard on Samsung's 2017 UHD TV lineup in the UK. HDR10+ launched that same year and, per the consortium behind it, has since gained support from over 170 companies. Amazon's streaming platform has carried HDR10+ content since December 2017. HDR10+ Technologies, LLC officially unveiled the Advanced specification in December 2025. (Samsung Newsroom, HDR10+, HDR10+ White Paper, HDR10+)

The competitive dynamic here is straightforward. Samsung has a long-standing refusal to license Dolby Vision for its TVs, and HDR10+ has served as its free, open alternative since 2017. HDR10+ Advanced closes the gap with Dolby Vision 2 on features, giving Samsung a comparable picture quality standard without the licensing cost. The question for consumers is whether the content ecosystem will follow. Dolby Vision 2 has committed content partners (Peacock, Canal+) and TV manufacturers (Hisense, Philips, TCL). HDR10+ Advanced has Amazon Prime Video and Samsung's 2026 TVs at launch. Both ecosystems are still in early deployment, and the practical experience for viewers will depend heavily on how much content actually ships with the enhanced format.

The broader concern is that the HDR format wars have now produced two competing standards launching at roughly the same time, each backed by a major TV manufacturer alliance. For streaming services, this means potentially preparing and delivering multiple HDR versions of the same content. For TV buyers, it means that the HDR format your TV supports will increasingly determine which streaming features you can access. The fragmentation is not new to anyone who lived through the earlier HDR10 versus Dolby Vision split, but the stakes are higher now that both standards are promising per-region brightness adjustment and scene-aware processing, features that are difficult to fake with a simpler fallback.