Netflix has grown from supporting High Dynamic Range (HDR) in a limited capacity nearly a decade ago with the release of Marco Polo to it now being the norm across the company’s original content.
In all there are over 11,000 hours of HDR content to stream on the platform, and with the right display, this delivers more realistic shades and colors for a more cinematic experience in your own living room.
But there isn’t just one flavor of HDR, and owners of TVs that only support HDR10+ rather than Dolby Vision have been out of luck, with Netflix not supporting the format. Now, however, Netflix has corrected that oversight and HDR10+ support is ready to roll out.
Netflix HDR10+ support on the way
“We are excited to announce that we are now streaming HDR10+ content on our service for AV1-enabled devices, enhancing the viewing experience for certified HDR10+ devices, which previously only received HDR10 content,” the company wrote on its Netflix Technology Blog.
AV1 is the standard for streaming 4K video without consuming vast amounts of data, and has been in use by Netflix for some time. AV1-SDR is now, according to the company, second only to H.264/AVC in terms of codec popularity, which isn’t bad going as that’s been in use for more than 20 years.
With the addition of HDR10+ streams to AV1, we expect the day is not far when AV1 will be the most streamed codec at Netflix
Netflix
“With the addition of HDR10+ streams to AV1, we expect the day is not far when AV1 will be the most streamed codec at Netflix,” Netflix added.
In all, AV1-HDR10+ content is available on “50% of all eligible viewing hours” — so around 5,500 hours worth of content. Netflix says that the aim is to ensure that all HDR titles are compatible by the end of 2025.
What devices support HDR10+?
In addition to having a device that supports HDR10+ and a compatible show or movie on hand to stream, you must have a Netflix Premium account to enjoy HDR content.
If you have one of the best TVs — which tend to already support the popular Dolby Vision format — you likely won’t see a difference. The big exception is Samsung, which still doesn’t support Dolby Vision, so owners of the company’s TVs definitely have something to smile about.
If you want to see if your device supports HDR10+, check out the official HDR10+ certified products tool. You can select by product type and by brand. For example, the Samsung Galaxy S25 series supports the standard, as does a wide range of TVs from Hisense and Roku.
Seeing the HDR10+ difference
If your device doesn’t support Dolby Vision but does offer HDR in some capacity, it’ll be using basic HDR10 on Netflix, rather than the ‘+’ variant. This uses “static metadata that is defined once for the entire content” allowing for a “one-size-fits-all tone mapping”, as the company explains.
By contrast, advanced versions of HDR like HDR10+ and Dolby Vision use dynamic metadata that “provides content image statistics on a per-frame basis, enabling optimized tone mapping adjustments for each scene”.
Netflix demonstrates the difference with the following two images. The top one is HDR10, while the bottom one is HDR10+.
At a glance, they look similar, but pay close attention to the flashlight in the middle of the image, and the differences are obvious.
Not only can you see three distinct bulbs rather than a single bright circle, but the document it’s resting upon is actually visible, rather than being lost in a sea of overexposure as it is with HDR10.
“The reason HDR10+, with its dynamic metadata, shines in this example is that the scenes preceding and following the scene with this frame have markedly different luminance statistics,” Netflix explains. “The static HDR10 metadata is unable to account for the change in the content.”
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