Apple TV app on smart TVs now streams in HDR10+

Apple has rolled out an update to its Apple TV app used by smart TVs and other devices, bringing HDR10+ support for Apple TV+ streams and for iTunes movies.

The introduction of tvOS 16 added multiple features, including support for video streaming using HDR10+ for the third-generation Apple TV 4K. Following that release, Apple has started to bring the same support to third-party hardware that uses the Apple TV app.

Smart TV owners are starting to see the update being brought to the app on their home devices, including Samsung smart TV models, reports FlatPanelsHD. Content from Apple TV+ and iTunes movie rentals are showing support for HDR10+ as an extra HDR option, alongside the existing base HDR10 and Dolby Vision support.

HDR10 is a standard that adds dynamic metadata to HDR10, enabling a picture to be optimized on a TV more precisely throughout a piece of content, scene by scene.

While a TV can display HDR10 content, it does need HDR10+ support in order to show HDR10+ video. If it's connected to a separate streaming-capable device, that too also has to support HDR10+ for it to work.

However, to add the support to content in the first place, studios must provide Apple with a HDR10+ master file. Since only a few studios actually release content using HDR10+, it won't be available for a lot of content provided through Apple's online services for quite some time.

6 Comments

dasjetta 36 comments · 15 Years

About 2 years ago

Why can’t they add HDR10+ to the older AppleTV streamers? You don’t need the A15 for that.

jeromec 210 comments · 11 Years

dasjetta said:

Why can’t they add HDR10+ to the older AppleTV streamers? You don’t need the A15 for that.

I agree. We still have a chance of it coming later, maybe even on November 4, when the new Apple TV is available.

lkrupp 10521 comments · 19 Years

dasjetta said:

Why can’t they add HDR10+ to the older AppleTV streamers? You don’t need the A15 for that.

Maybe because older ATV streamers are connected to older TVs that don’t support HDR10+? And only Samsung and a couple of other TVs (TCL, Hisense) support HDR10+ right now. And as the article points out, there’s almost no HDR10+ content available while Dolby Vision is widely accepted as better than HDR10+. HDR10+ is a fork of HDR developed by Samsung and Panasonic mainly because they didn’t want to pay the licensing fees for Dolby Vision and thought they could do better. Dolby Vision is also a fork of HDR developed and licensed by Dolby Labs of course.

wood1208 2932 comments · 10 Years

lkrupp said:

dasjetta said:

Why can’t they add HDR10+ to the older AppleTV streamers? You don’t need the A15 for that.

Maybe because older ATV streamers are connected to older TVs that don’t support HDR10+? And only Samsung and a couple of other TVs (TCL, Hisense) support HDR10+ right now. And as the article points out, there’s almost no HDR10+ content available while Dolby Vision is widely accepted as better than HDR10+. HDR10+ is a fork of HDR developed by Samsung and Panasonic mainly because they didn’t want to pay the licensing fees for Dolby Vision and thought they could do better. Dolby Vision is also a fork of HDR developed and licensed by Dolby Labs of course.

Supporting HDR10+ is no brainer because of no licensing fee. But, Samsung TVs not supporting Dolby Vision is no excuse. Let's say Samsung can negotiate with reasonable fee(few $ per set) for Dolby Vision license and adds those few dollars to $1000+ TV cost. Consumers don't see that few dollars increase in price and don't care. But, Samsung has fake pride to not support Dolby Vision. Only consumers can force Samsung to add Dolby Vision by not buying there TVs. Now LGs and others OLED TVs have come down to affordable price then why buy Samsung TVs. Now a days OLED panel burn-in rarely happen due to improving built-in features/tech so just buy OLED TVs. Apple uses OLED on iphones and no issue with screen.

lkrupp said:

dasjetta said:

Why can’t they add HDR10+ to the older AppleTV streamers? You don’t need the A15 for that.

Maybe because older ATV streamers are connected to older TVs that don’t support HDR10+? And only Samsung and a couple of other TVs (TCL, Hisense) support HDR10+ right now. And as the article points out, there’s almost no HDR10+ content available while Dolby Vision is widely accepted as better than HDR10+. HDR10+ is a fork of HDR developed by Samsung and Panasonic mainly because they didn’t want to pay the licensing fees for Dolby Vision and thought they could do better. Dolby Vision is also a fork of HDR developed and licensed by Dolby Labs of course.

Actually I was referring to the older streamers as last years model (2021) with the A12. I would venture to say that the majority of them are connected to TVs that support HDR10+

I seem to recall Apple announcing support long ago and expected support on the A12 model.