New Samsung TVs with HDR10+ will be “Adaptive” to Ambient Lighting

HDR10+ Adaptive is a new feature coming to the high dynamic range standard that’ll optimize TV picture quality based on a room’s ambient brightness, Samsung has announced.

HDR content is typically designed to look its best in dark rooms with as little ambient light as possible, but the new feature promises to use your TV’s light sensor to react to bright environments and adjust its picture quality accordingly. Samsung says the feature will launch globally with its “upcoming QLED TV products.”

HDR10+ isn’t the first HDR standard to have introduced such a feature. At last year’s CES, Dolby announced Dolby Vision IQ, a new feature for its own HDR standard that similarly promises to optimize HDR content for the room it’s being watched in. The feature went on to appear in select TVs from LG and Panasonic over the course of the year and was generally well-received in reviews.

Samsung notes that HDR10+ Adaptive will work with Filmmaker Mode, a display setting launched last year which turns off post-processing effects like motion smoothing to show content as accurately as possible.

Compared to Dolby Vision, the HDR10+ standard isn’t quite as widely supported by streaming services. However, it has the support of Samsung, the world’s biggest TV manufacturer, and Amazon through its Amazon Prime Video streaming service. It’s no coincidence that these were the two companies that announced the standard over three years ago. Dolby Vision, meanwhile, is supported in TVs from manufacturers like LG and Sony, and content supporting the standard can be found on streaming services like Netflix and Disney Plus.

Samsung says its upcoming QLED TVs will support HDR10+ Adaptive, but it’s unclear if the company’s existing TVs will be updated with the new feature.

—
Photo Credit:  Mr.Mikla / Shutterstock.com