Samsung announced on August 4, 2026 that HDR10+ Advanced streaming will begin rolling out on Prime Video this month, making Amazon's service the first streaming platform to offer the format globally on supported titles (Samsung Newsroom, Korea Times).

The rollout starts on Samsung's 2026 television lineup, with plans to expand to additional product categories in the future (Korea Times). Samsung co-developed the HDR10+ image quality format, and the broader HDR10+ ecosystem already includes its Galaxy phones, which support HDR10+ video recording through the Camera app's Advanced video options (Samsung Support).

HDR10+ Advanced is built around two features that Samsung highlighted in its announcement. The first, Enhanced Overall Brightness, uses extended statistical metadata to deliver brighter, more precise HDR across the full tonal range. Standard HDR formats typically apply one brightness adjustment to an entire movie or episode — like setting a single exposure value for every photo in a roll of film. HDR10+ Advanced instead uses dynamic metadata on a scene-by-scene basis, so a compatible display can adjust brightness targets per frame or per scene, rather than applying one global setting to the whole program.

The second feature, Intelligent Motion Smoothing, uses the same scene-by-scene metadata to let displays dynamically adjust motion processing. Traditional motion interpolation — the feature that inserts extra frames to make motion look smoother — applies one algorithm across an entire program. That can cause visual glitches during scene transitions or when content frame rates change mid-stream. By tying motion processing to per-scene metadata, HDR10+ Advanced aims to reduce those glitches while keeping fast-action content smooth.

Samsung also said HDR10+ Advanced uses AI-powered tone mapping to reveal details in shadows during darker scenes while delivering heightened brightness in action movies and sports (Engadget). Tone mapping is the process of converting a wide range of brightness values into something a display can actually show. The AI tone mapping appears to work as an additional layer on top of the extended statistical metadata, making scene-level decisions about how to distribute brightness across the tonal range.

Samsung first unveiled HDR10+ Advanced in November 2025 and demoed the format on its latest TVs at CES in January 2026 (Engadget). The company published launch announcements simultaneously across its US, global, Spanish-language Spain, and Colombia newsroom sites, signaling a coordinated worldwide rollout rather than a regional pilot (Samsung US, Samsung Global, Samsung Spain, Samsung Colombia).

The broader context here is Samsung's ongoing effort to differentiate its display pipeline through metadata-rich HDR. The HDR10+ format competes with Dolby Vision, which also uses dynamic metadata but charges licensing fees. HDR10+ is royalty-free, which has historically helped it gain traction among display manufacturers and streaming services. The addition of AI-powered tone mapping and scene-level motion metadata in the Advanced tier pushes the format into territory that, until now, has been the domain of proprietary processing systems running on high-end displays.

The initial constraint is hardware availability. HDR10+ Advanced is limited to Samsung's 2026 TV lineup at launch, meaning the number of compatible devices will grow only as consumers purchase new sets. Samsung has suggested it will expand to additional product categories, which could mean mid-range displays or possibly mobile devices — the Galaxy line already supports HDR10+ capture — but the company has not specified which categories or when.

For streaming engineers and content pipeline architects, the key question is what additional metadata the Advanced format requires at the mastering stage. Extended statistical metadata for brightness and scene-by-scene motion parameters imply that content must be authored or re-authored with these fields filled in, which could create a gap between the headline availability on Prime Video and the actual catalog depth of properly mastered titles.

Samsung's earlier announcement that the entire Prime Video HDR library is available in HDR10+ provides a baseline (Samsung Media Library). Whether that library carries forward to the Advanced tier with full metadata, or requires a separate mastering pass, is not yet clear from the announcement.

What is clear is that Samsung is using its co-developed format to build an end-to-end HDR pipeline from capture on Galaxy devices through mastering and distribution on Prime Video to display on its 2026 TVs. This mirrors a pattern seen across the display industry, where panel manufacturers increasingly differentiate not through hardware alone but through the software and metadata layers that control how content reaches the screen. The AI tone mapping component fits a broader trend of machine-learning-assisted image processing becoming a standard layer in consumer display pipelines, from upscaling to frame interpolation to dynamic range management.

The practical outcome for viewers with compatible 2026 Samsung TVs is improved shadow detail, higher peak brightness in dynamic scenes, and motion processing that adapts to content rather than applying a one-size-fits-all algorithm. Whether those improvements justify a hardware upgrade is a question only the market will answer.