HDR formats explained: HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision and HLG

The only thing separating HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision and HLG is how each describes brightness to your television. HDR10 sends one set of numbers for a whole film, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision send fresh numbers every scene, and HLG sends nothing because it was built for live broadcast. Two newer tiers exist. HDR10+ ADVANCED, announced 3 November 2025, is already on select Prime Video titles. Dolby Vision 2, announced 2 September 2025, had no content as of mid-2026 and cannot reach a set you already own.

The four you actually meet

The CTA's consumer-definitions document pins the HDR10 Media Profile to five lines: EOTF SMPTE ST 2084, 4:2:0 sub-sampling for compressed sources, 10-bit depth, ITU-R BT.2020 primaries, and ST 2086 metadata plus MaxFALL and MaxCLL. ST 2084 is the PQ curve, covering 0 to 10,000 cd/m². ST 2086 describes the monitor the film was graded on, not the picture. Your TV gets all of it once, computes one curve, and applies it to the cave scene and the snowfield alike.

Static versus dynamic, in actual fields

HDR10+ is SMPTE ST 2094-40, whose 2020 revision is titled "Dynamic Metadata for Color Volume Transform", Application #4. Every metadata set must carry MaxSCL, the maximum of each linearised R, G and B component in the scene, plus a cumulative-frequency histogram of the scene's brightness. It may add a knee point in 1/4095 steps and Bézier anchors in 1/1023 steps, where the curve bends. Application version 0 allows up to 15 histogram entries and 15 anchors; version 1 fixes nine of each. Dolby Vision does the same job with ST 2094-10. All of it earns its keep in proportion to the gap between the mastering display and yours.

HLG went the other way. The BBC and NHK developed it, ARIB standardised it as STD-B67, and it also appears in ITU-R BT.2100. Its lower signal range uses a gamma curve and its upper range a log curve, which makes it backward compatible with SDR gamma, though with Rec. 2020 primaries it can look desaturated on a set that does not handle it.

Dolby Vision profiles are what break playback

Profiles 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 6 are deprecated and not supported for new applications. Profile 5 is not. It is the streaming default, it has no HDR10 fallback, and it is the most common cause of grey, washed-out, purple or green-tinted playback on media servers and non-Dolby-Vision displays. Profile 8.1 interleaves the RPU metadata into a base layer that is itself valid HDR10, so a set without a Dolby Vision decoder simply sees HDR10. Profile 7 comes as MEL, metadata only and functionally like 8.1, or FEL, which adds residual picture data modifying every base-layer pixel.

So a TV listing only HDR10 and HLG is not broken. It plays HDR10+ and Profile 8.x through the HDR10 base layer, losing the dynamic metadata, not the HDR.

Which service carries which

Netflix's HDR10+ arrived on 26 March 2025 encoded as AV1-HDR10+, so playback needs a device that decodes both. Disney+ and Hulu added HDR10+ in late October 2025 across 1,000+ Hulu titles, on Samsung sets from 2018 onward. BBC iPlayer is HLG only, which is what carried 54 of the 104 matches of the 2026 World Cup in UHD. On disc, a Dolby Vision Ultra HD Blu-ray carries a compatible 10-bit HDR stream playable in every UHDA-certified player.

The licensing reason Samsung holds out

Dolby's device royalty is small: Giles Baker, an SVP at Dolby, has put it at under $3 per TV. On the content side Dolby sells the licence for its artistic trim controls at $1,000 once, usable across a facility's machines, with automatic analysis metadata free and no per-title or studio-wide fees. HDR10+ charges no per-unit royalty either, only annual administration fees: $2,500 for a source provider, $10,000 for a display manufacturer, $4,000 for an SoC vendor, nothing for content, OS and tool companies, capped at US$10,000 in aggregate.

Three dollars does not explain why the world's largest TV maker refuses the feature on a $6,499.99 set. The rest is control. Dolby Vision is not a bolt-on metadata format, it is a picture-processing engine licensed from Dolby that takes over that part of the television. LG is just as firm in the other direction on HDR10+: "we don't believe in that, and I think we won't ever."

Accepting a format is not the same as rendering it

Format support is a decoder feature. Picture quality is a panel feature.

VESA's DisplayHDR tiers put the gap in numbers, because they specify brightness twice. DisplayHDR 400 asks for 400 cd/m² on a 10 percent window but only 320 cd/m² full screen. True Black 1400, added for 2026 OLEDs, asks 1,400 cd/m² at 10 percent and just 750 cd/m² full screen. A panel that hits its headline peak on a small highlight will not hold it across a snowfield.

Mastering peaks are lower than the marketing implies. HDR10+ Technologies says most professional HDR content today is mastered to 1,000 nits. Sony's BVM-HX3110 reference monitor sustains 4,000 nits on a 10 percent window; the older BVM-HX310 stopped at 1,000.

Price signals more than logos. Samsung's 2026 range runs from $249.99 for a 43-inch U8000H to $29,999.99 for a 115-inch R95H Micro RGB, all HDR10+ and no Dolby Vision. LG's 2026 OLEDs run from $1,399 for the 42-inch C6 to $24,999 for the 97-inch G6, all Dolby Vision and no HDR10+. Every one wears an HDR logo.

Certification does not close the gap. HDR10+ certification does test rendering, not just decoding: Authorized Test Centers check luminance accuracy, colour gamut and tone mapping. But they judge it relative to the display's own capability. It certifies faithfulness, not capability.

Two new tiers, one with nothing to watch

Dolby Vision 2 comes in two levels. The base tier adds Content Intelligence, including Precision Black, which Dolby says "reduces consumer frustration that the image is 'too dark'", and Light Sense, plus bi-directional tone mapping that optimises a grade upward for brighter displays rather than only downward; Authentic Motion, shot-by-shot judder control, belongs to the Max tier. The caveats matter more. It is not backwards compatible and cannot reach an existing television by firmware, because it needs MediaTek Pentonic 800 silicon or above. None of the CES 2026 launch sets from Hisense, TCL or Philips shipped with it enabled; Hisense targets end of Q2 or early Q3 2026, TCL and Philips late 2026. Peacock and CANAL+ have committed, no studio has.

HDR10+ ADVANCED, formally released on 10 December 2025, supports 10-bit to 16-bit implementations, covers up to 10,000 nits, works with HDR10 static metadata and carries no licensing fees. Its features are Enhanced Overall Brightness, Intelligent Motion Smoothing, Local Tone Mapping, Genre-based Optimization, Advanced Color Control and Adaptive Cloud Gaming. There is no tier split: any TV implementing it gets all six. Samsung named the 2026 QN990H, QN80H, S95H, S90H, S85H, R95H, R90H and The Frame LS03H.

When HDR looks wrong

"Dolby Vision too dark" on an LG is usually Energy Saving or Auto Power Saving throttling the panel, or the set auto-selecting a dark-room preset such as Cinema or Filmmaker in a bright room. Check picture mode and power settings first. Wrong colours are almost always a signalling mismatch, not a broken panel: HDMI Enhanced Format or Deep Colour switched off for that input, the wrong RGB range or colour space, or a marginal cable. For games, LG and Samsung sets expose an HGiG setting that stands the display's tone mapping down in favour of the console's calibration, though HGiG itself states that "HGIG Mode" is not a function defined in its guidelines.

Two claims to ignore. Dolby Vision is not 12-bit on your television: the 12-bit figure describes what dual-layer encoding can reconstruct, while every single-layer profile above is 10-bit, and content and panels are 10-bit. And HDR10+ does not cap at 4,000 or 5,000 nits, whatever November 2025 coverage claimed. HDR10+ Technologies answered that directly: "Neither HDR10+ nor HDR10+ ADVANCED is limited to 4,000 nits, 5,000 nits, or any figure below 10,000 nits." That 4,000 figure dates from the years when a roughly 4,000-nit reference monitor was the standard mastering tool.

When two televisions are in front of you and only one takes Dolby Vision, buy the brighter one.