I’m a big fan of new technology, and the introduction of HDR has been a big one for me. Not only does it make my viewing experience better, but I also haven’t had to buy anything new to get it to work. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a TV nowadays that doesn’t support HDR10 in some way.
Where it starts to get tricky is HDR10+. As you might’ve guessed by the name, HDR10+ is an improved version of HDR10. However, instead of TV’s simply having native support for the format, you have to actively seek out an option that has HDR10+. To be fair, this is similar to how Dolby Vision works, but I’ve found that Dolby Vision has much more widespread support, not to mention entire theaters dedicated to the brand at AMC.
You need to buy specific TVs for both Dolby Vision and HDR10+, but it’s not quite as simple as that. If you seek out a TV for HDR10+ specifically, you might be disappointed to know that the format isn’t nearly as popular as Dolby Vision. It reminds me a lot of how HD-DVD and Blu-ray were competitors at one point, but Blu-ray eventually won out. Dolby Vision is included on many 4K Blu-ray discs, while it seems like just a handful of discs support HDR10+. They’re out there, but you have to actually track them down instead of just assuming that new releases have support.
Now, don’t get me wrong, HDR10+ is better than regular HDR10, but I simply don’t think twice about whether something has HDR10+ or not. It’s just not a needle mover for me, and I’d be way more open to seeing something with Dolby Vision support instead.
The HDR war feels like it’s already been won
A lot of ground to make up
HDR10+ hasn’t really set the world on fire in terms of wide adoption. If you look around for it, you’ll find it on some TVs. Samsung has always been the trailblazer for the format, but it typically came at the expense of Dolby Vision. Considering Dolby Vision is far more common, having a TV that only supports HDR10+ often means you’re stuck watching something with regular HDR10. That’s still a good way to watch movies, and it’s also an upgrade over 1080p, but it’ll always leave you wanting more.
HDR is one of the biggest upgrades we’ve made in picture quality, and it’d suck to just be locked out of an improved version of it just because you bought the wrong TV. Unfortunately, that’s the very situation you can find yourself in if you buy an HDR10+ only TV over something with Dolby Vision.
With the way Dolby Vision keeps improving, I’d much rather just stay on that bandwagon. I know HDR10+ has the Advanced format ready to be pushed out the door, but Dolby also has Dolby Vision 2 to counter that. If more things started to support the HDR10+ format, I’d be more open to it. As it stands right now, I’m just not interested in anything that comes with the HDR10+ branding. It’ll take a long time to win me over. I’m not somebody who shows a bunch of brand loyalty, and I’ll always gravitate to who’s offering the better product. From where I’m sitting, it seems like Dolby Vision is that product, so I’ll stick with that for now.
HDR10+ Advanced needs to become more widespread
It can’t be locked to a single ecosystem
HDR10+ Advanced sounds good, but if it’s locked to Samsung TVs, I don’t see a reason to get excited about it. I like that it’s not going to have separate tiers like Dolby Vision 2, but I’m not going to go out and buy a new TV just for it. I haven’t bought a Samsung TV for over a decade, and while I’m sure the company still has solid options, I’m not particularly interested in upgrading at this time.
Another issue is that streaming services haven’t latched on to HDR10+ the same way they have for Dolby Vision. I’ve seen Dolby Vision used as a selling point for the highest tier of several streaming services, such as Netflix and HBO Max. In 2026, most major streaming services are on board, and Netflix added HDR10+ support a few months ago. That support is nice to see, but I want to see it from more than just streamers. While streaming represents the largest audience, there’s still not a lot of HDR10+ support on physical media. As it turns out, that’s my main way of watching things, so if I had an HDR10+ TV, I wouldn’t get a lot of use from the feature.
Perhaps the biggest problem is that I’m perfectly happy with how Dolby Vision looks. If HDR10+ Advanced theoretically looked better than Dolby Vision 2, I wouldn’t suddenly go out and drop $1,000 on a new TV. What it could end up doing is being good enough for me to consider the next time I’m in the market for a TV. I’ll need to see much more adoption from the format for me to consider, and I’d like to see more physical media include it as an option. I have a decent library of 4K Blu-rays I’ve been building up, and I can count on one hand the number of them that come with HDR10+ as an option.
It’s promising to see more resources go into HDR10+, so I don’t feel like it’s going to be abandoned any time soon. However, money can’t keep being poured into something for it to never catch on in the mainstream. We’ve seen this time and time again with technology, and it’s exactly what happened to 3D TVs. It’s not that the tech wasn’t cool, it’s that there wasn’t enough consumer support to sustain it. I don’t know if HDR10+ Advanced is going to follow the same road, and I hope it doesn’t. While I might not use HDR10+, it’s still good for competitors to be around because it makes everybody better. If Dolby Vision were the only player in town, I don’t know if there would even be a Dolby Vision 2 in the first place.
