Samsung and Amazon Prime Video have launched HDR10+ Advanced streaming on Prime Video globally, starting August 2026, with Samsung's 2026 TV lineup as the first TVs announced to support the new standard. The companies are calling it the world's first HDR10+ Advanced streaming experience. (Samsung Newsroom, The Verge)

HDR10+ Advanced builds on the existing HDR10+ dynamic metadata framework with two key additions. Dynamic metadata, in HDR terms, means the video signal carries instructions that tell the TV how to adjust brightness and contrast on a per-scene basis rather than using a single setting for the entire movie or show. HDR10+ Advanced goes further by carrying richer metadata tags that describe content at a granular level: genre classifications (Movie, Sports, Animation, News, or General) plus specific attributes like lighting, motion, and perspective, according to the standard's FAQ. (HDR10+ FAQ) It also introduces local tone mapping, which adjusts brightness for specific areas of the screen rather than applying a single tone-mapping curve across the entire frame. The standard additionally promises an "Intelligent Motion Smoothing" mode that can adjust 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 Dolby Vision 2, which also uses per-scene and per-area metadata for more granular HDR treatment. The critical 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 HDR format availability is shaped as much by licensing and litigation as by technical merit. (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 catalog leaves an open question about how much of Prime Video's HDR library will actually ship with the enhanced metadata 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, 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 open-standard alternative since 2017. HDR10+ Advanced closes the gap with Dolby Vision 2 on the metadata front, giving Samsung a comparable feature set 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 richer metadata.

The broader context here is that the HDR format wars have now produced two parallel dynamic-metadata standards launching in the same window, each backed by a major display manufacturer alliance. For streaming services, this means potentially mastering and delivering multiple HDR variants. For TV buyers, it means that the HDR format supported by their chosen panel will increasingly determine which streaming features they 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 tone mapping and scene-aware processing, features that are difficult to fake with a simple static-metadata fallback.