HDR10 vs HDR10+ vs Dolby Vision: Which high dynamic range format is better?

A big buzzword in the consumer television space right now is HDR (high dynamic range), which is a set of specific content formats that are usually compatible with big-screen Ultra-HD TVs. HDR support on your TV lets you experience better brightness levels, more vibrant colours, and generally better picture performance on the whole as compared to standard dynamic range content. You do of course need to keep in mind that many things need to come together for you to be able to enjoy HDR on your TV.

Notably, even within the HDR ecosystem, there are multiple formats which are supported on televisions and other devices, the most popular of them being HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision. Depending on which of these formats is supported by your TV, you’ll be able to access compatible content via streaming services like Netflix or physical media such as Blu-Ray and enjoy the benefits of HDR viewing.

HDR10 vs HDR10+ vs Dolby Vision: Differences

Depending on the brand and model of the television, different HDR formats are supported. Many televisions today come with Dolby Vision support, while others come with support for HDR10+ or HDR10. Which one you choose will depend on the kind of HDR content you have access to, with plenty of Ultra-HD HDR content available on popular streaming platforms such as Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+ Hotstar.

HDR10 and HDR10+ are largely open standards available for use among various manufacturers, while Dolby Vision is a proprietary standard which needs to be licensed by display manufacturers and content producers alike. Additionally, Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are both backwards compatible with HDR10 content, but not with each other. In such cases, both technologies will default to HDR10 for cross-compatibility.

The actual formats themselves have some notable technical differences. As the name suggests, HDR10 supports 10-bit colour depth, boosting the range of available colour shades that the display can reproduce to over 1 billion, as compared to around 16.7 million colours supported on 8-bit standard dynamic range content.

Dolby Vision is rated for up to 12-bit colour depth, while HDR10+ is designed to operate flexibly for 10-bit colour depth or higher. That said, most content (particularly streaming content) sticks to 10-bit colour depth, so you’ll find similar results with HDR10+ and Dolby Vision across content and displays. 

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Additionally, both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ support dynamic metadata, while HDR10 supports static metadata. Having dynamic metadata means brightness and tone-mapping can change for every scene, giving content producers the ability to ‘instruct’ the display how to adjust these parameters for each scene. This provides a better viewing experience that is tailored for that particular content. Colours too can adjust to the nearest match to what the TV can produce, thus making for brighter (or darker, if need be) and more realistic colours as compared to SDR and HDR10 content.

HDR10 vs HDR10+ vs Dolby Vision: Which one should you get?

This largely depends on the kind of content you intend to watch, but your selection may also be affected by your brand preferences. For example, Samsung televisions widely support the HDR10+ format but not Dolby Vision, while television from other brands such as LG and Sony support Dolby Vision. Some TVs from brands such as Xiaomi or Hisense support both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision.

If you aren’t particular about the TV brand, you could choose based on your preference of streaming services. Among the major streaming services in India providing HDR content, Netflix, Apple TV+ and Disney+ Hotstar have a large collection of Dolby Vision movies and shows, while Prime Video has a big library of HDR10+ content. You could thus choose based on what you have subscribed to or plan to utilise more often.