HDR Compatible – HDR10+, HDR10 AND HLG Posted on August 6, 2022 By Phil Jones The HDR provides a major improvement in dynamic range as well as color. It lets you see more detail in the shadows and the bright areas and delivers more saturated lifelike colors. There are two HDR standards, the first being PQ (ST2084). While there are three variations of PQ, most projectors are only compatible with HDR10, which is commonly used for UHD Blu-ray discs (4K movies) and recorded streaming content. Epson projectors like Pro Cinema LS12000 were some of the first projectors to support HDR10+. Like the more mainstream HDR10, both HDR10+ and Dolby Vision are also based on PQ (Perceptual Quantization), also called ST2084. The only difference between the three PQ-based formats is what type of HDR metadata is delivered to a video display to help it tone map HDR content to fit a display’s brightness capabilities. While the metadata in HDR10 content is static, in HDR10+ as well as Dolby Vision content, this metadata is dynamic. Since the luminance information for each scene is embedded into the content as dynamic metadata, tone mapping can be optimized scene by scene or frame by frame. This helps the projector faithfully reproduce the HDR images as intended by the creators. While HDR10 and Dolby Vision is the main way HDR content is currently distributed, Amazon Prime Video has announced support for HDR10+. There is also a limited number of 4K UHD Blu-ray discs available, and a select number of UHD BD players from companies like Panasonic support it. The second HDR standard is HLG (Hybrid Log-Gamma), and it was developed for live broadcast. While several Epson projectors support HDR10+ and HDR10 and HLG, these models do not support Dolby Vision. However most Dolby Vision content is either backward compatible with or available in HDR10 so owners will be able to enjoy 99% of HDR content available on the market now and in the future.
