In a nutshell: Following the recent announcement of Dolby Vision 2, Samsung has previewed its latest HDR format, HDR10+ Advanced. This is the company's first major update to its high dynamic range technology. Designed to rival Dolby's next-gen HDR system, HDR10+ Advanced introduces six key upgrades over the existing HDR10+ standard and will debut with Samsung's new high-end TVs in 2026.
Samsung says HDR10+ Advanced goes beyond improved color accuracy and offers a range of state-of-the-art features, such as HDR boosting, intelligent motion smoothing, enhanced tone-mapping, gaming optimizations, and more.
The headline feature is HDR10+ Bright, which leverages extended metadata and AI-driven image processing to boost brightness, expand color volume, and refine contrast, especially on modern Mini-LED and Micro RGB TVs capable of reaching up to 4,000 – 5,000 nits of peak brightness.
Another addition, HDR10+ Genre, uses AI and embedded metadata to automatically adjust tone mapping and color based on the type of content. This enables different color tones for movies, sports, and other types of content, improving the viewing experience.
Samsung is also introducing Intelligent FRC, a tool aimed at content creators that allows precise control over frame interpolation on a scene-by-scene basis. TVs equipped with this feature will dynamically adjust motion smoothing based on content type, ambient lighting, and user preferences.
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In addition, Detailed Local Tone Mapping brings a zone-based approach to image rendering, breaking visuals into multiple regions for finer local dimming and improved contrast, accuracy, and depth. Meanwhile, Advanced Color Control provides more granular color data transmission than any existing HDR format, according ot Samsung, enabling smoother and more accurate gradations.
Finally, the Intelligent Gaming mode is designed to enhance immersion on consoles and cloud gaming platforms by automatically tuning tone mapping to match real-time lighting conditions.
Samsung plans to showcase HDR10+ Advanced at CES 2026 in January, with the first TVs featuring the new technology expected to launch later that year. Amazon Prime Video has already pledged support for the format, and other major platforms are expected to get on board in the future.