HDR10 vs HDR10+ vs Dolby Vision: Do HDR Formats Matter?

While the debate rages in the nooks and crannies of forums and comments sections, we’re here to provide some information that goes a bit deeper than bit-depth and is a little more dynamic than discussions of metadata. Is there really a difference between HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision?

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00:00 Intro
00:39 Considerations
02:27 What Makes a Good HDR Experience?
05:20 Case Study: Hisense A7N
06:48 Causes of the Dolby Difference
08:07 Is Dolby Vision Better?
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[DarrenKrusi]

I am a little sad this wasn't filmed in HDR

[digitaldevigner]

The problem with Dolby Vision vs HDR10+ is that most colorists actually putting out HDR prefer to use Dolby. That’s it. It’s just utilized more by more experts that know what they are doing. HDR10+ gets largely neglected in that world. At least in the past. That may be changing now. Creating HDR10+ currently isn’t as nice as Dolby Vision. There are not a lot of professional tools to make the creation process as easy or productive. Dolby has more money to push it and make better tools to create it. So pros use it more.

The rest of the world are really not even touching HDR yet. Even in the wedding or corporate video worlds most completely ignore its existence and really don’t understand it very well.

Dolby Vision is incredibly expensive to create. In Davinci Resolve it used to cost $2500 a year to export content with proper Dolby Vision dynamic metadata. It has since dropped to a one time fee of $1000 likely due to HDR10+ finally being utilized a little more. That’s really expensive and another reason why it was exclusive to only really Hollywood and other professionals.

Fun fact but the dynamic metadata is literally a text file that has a timestamp and what the gamma should be. It’s not any more complex than closed captioning text data. Just a large set of timestamps and a brightness value for each. The text file literally tells the video to adjust its gamma to that value once it hits that timestamp. Much like closed captioning will display certain words when it hits a certain timestamp.

That’s what all this extra cost is for. 0f course the TVs cost more because they have to know how to use that text data and make adjustments to the picture accordingly based on Dolby standards. Most of it however is just licensing the Dolby name. Just like that ridiculous $2500/year fee to create the content. It literally just lets us set the values per scene or even per frame if we want to. We don’t even have to use it that much. A movie that rarely changes in tone values might set it once and never again. Sometimes a movie may only change a few times. It depends on the content and if a normal static gamma would not look as good.

Changing it per frame is possible but very extreme and nobody does. Even per shot isn’t usually a thing because most shots have the same environment and same brightness for a scene.

[OscarNight]

It's just great that you don't just test or compare the high-end devices but simply use a low budget device and show the differences. Really great 👍🏼

[jessicalawson]

So it doesn't really matter on higher end tv's but budget tv's get a bigger boost.

[yousuff]

I have a midrange OLED (LG C1) and the biggest difference for me with Dolby Vision (streamed content) is more detail in low light scenes and less black crush.

[BangSkeeet]

You guys should really start testing in all formats to see if the TVs are consistent across HDR10/+/DV. I remember the U8G had a terrible EOTF for HDR, but upon detecting a DV signal it would start tracking the EOTF a lot more accurately.

I always wanted to know how did that affect the Rec2020 color gamut and volume, contrast, and peak brightness.

[Chrisratata]

People in this community can get weird about their allengiance to HDR and DV. In reality, something having that logo on it is no guarantee that it was applied well. The people mastering and authoring a disc still has to take the time to configure for the title to reach its full potential...yet sometimes shortcuts are taken

[chriskelly]

This so far is the clearest explanation and comparison between HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision yet! Being that Dolby Vision is the preferred format among 4K Blu-ray enthusiasts such as Youtube's best physical media experts such as Jeff Rauseo, MovieGuy365, and Midlevel Media, I watch the Dolby Vision encode whenever a disc includes one. One thing which is hard to get used to is my Sony X90CL holding back and rarely reaching its full peak brightness when set to Dolby Vision Dark, but time seems to be helping me adapt and adjust. While I have my favorite physical media experts, my favorite home theater experts include Youtubers such as all the folks from Rtings Home Theater, Brian from Brian's Tech Therapy, Caleb Denison from Digital Trends, Quantum TV, Stop the FOMO, and Vincent from HDTVTest.

[coolsameer]

I have an old hisense U6g and just by changing some color settings, picture quality is greatly improved in all HDR versions.

[dragonsoul]

Finally a channel made a video on this! While I wish you compared HDR+ and Dolby Vision on 4K Blu-ray too, this gave good insight on the formats. Hope to see a comparison with 4K Blu-rays in the future.

[rodmunch]

On my projector, XGIMI Horizon Ultra, the results match nearly exactly what you see on the cheap TV. Dolby Vision looks notably better than the generic 'HDR' setting. It's pretty dramatic.

[EhNothing]

Honestly, if I'm paying multiple thousands of dollars for a TV, it better support all of the formats. Yes, they have to pay a couple dollars for a DV chip, but on a TV that expensive, they can afford the "hit".

[SpontaneousWeasel]

TCL 85C 805K user here - my set can reach up to 1500nits in HDT highlights - as the set supports all
the formats I found DV gives the highest peak highlights and overall 100% brightness with highly saturated colors, hdr10+ gives the most natural looking IQ with duller highlights and more reserved coloirs, hdr10 is serviceable but noticeably less contrasty as the other two leaving an overall less impressive image quality. As Abby says in the video here overall bit rate will make the most noticeable difference to the quality. A 100gb hdr10 blu ray will look crisper than a 20gbDV amazon stream could.

[slerched]

How about a similar video comparing HDR10, HDR10+, and DV on disc? You mention it is different and send us to the article, which is cool, but would also be nice to have a similar comparison video for on disc content for those of us that want to spend money on a "premium player" and experience.

Please.

[carlm]

Its also worth noting on Kaleidescape it shows the file sizes for Dolby Vision and HDR10. Just picking Mad Max Furiosa as an example, Dolby Vision is 5.3GB larger than the HDR10 version - thats a lot of data!
I can't say what it would be for HDR10+ as there aren't many movies finished in this format.

[SonnyDarvish]

HDR High Dynamic Range should be all about brightness and contrast management, adding color changes only tells me they've done it to oversell the main mechanism. I can bump up vibrance and saturation by my own, thank you.

[gao]

It's only been two months since this and HDR10+ is now on most Streaming services

[veilmontTV]

So did you abandon your oled burn in test? Its been on a year since the last update

[antisystemicparadise]

HDR10+ and Dolby Vision are both HDR formats but they share different processing and in order to get good results in HDR you need a high end tv unfortunately, don't expect to get good results with a 600 or 700 bucks tv and i really really mean this, DON'T THROW AWAY YOUR SWEAT!! To regret it in the end, instead wait to gather the amount you need for a high end tv and then go for it. Me going finally doing this for the first time in my life, it looks as it suppose to be looking and I don't regret anything at all. I bought the s90c and i don't miss anything from my previous budget Sony either.

[elvisjones]

I like Dolby Vision, especially using DVision 4K blurays and a LG pled TV!