Netflix has announced that it’s adding support for HDR10+ streaming, on top of the existing HDR10 and Dolby Vision formats that are already offered on the streaming service. HDR10+ should offer greater visual fidelity on a per-frame basis for Netflix’s frequently dark original programming.
The company is enabling HDR10+ with the AV1 codec, the specification originally released in 2018 that’s gradually become the standard for streaming 4K video without gobbling data. Netflix first adopted AV1 as a way to help customers save data while watching on their phone, but the compression tech works just as well for streaming large HDR files. Netflix is enabling HDR10+ on select popular titles now, and hopes to eventually offer all HDR content in the new format. Anyone with a Netflix Premium subscription and a device that supports both HDR10+ and AV1 (which includes most modern mobile phones and tablets) should be able to watch compatible content in HDR10+.
After 4K, high dynamic range (HDR) has come to define the look of modern TV and movies, particularly on streaming. HDR content makes clear the stark differences between the light and dark parts of an image. The under-exposed, muddy quality of modern streaming TV is frequently due to an expectation that audiences will be viewing on a device that supports HDR. Without it, you can’t see anything. With it, you can pick up all the various shades of gray that have become the norm in prestige TV.
Netflix first rolled out support for HDR in 2016 with the debut of Marco Polo, and in the years since, has made supporting Dolby Vision and HDR10, the most common HDR format, the norm on its service. If you’ve been watching Netflix on a display that already uses Dolby Vision, you likely won’t notice a difference, but if you’re TV only offers HDR10+, adding support for the format should make watching everything a little bit better.