HDR 10 Plus and Dolby Vision: Understanding the Differences

If you're looking to upgrade your TV, you may have come across two popular HDR (High Dynamic Range) formats: HDR 10 Plus and Dolby Vision. While both offer improved picture quality compared to standard HD TVs, there are some key differences between them. HDR 10 Plus is an open-standard format that offers better dynamic range and a wider color gamut than traditional HDR. It also supports variable metadata, which allows for more accurate color grading and contrast control. On the other hand, Dolby Vision is a proprietary format developed by Dolby Laboratories. It offers even better dynamic range and color accuracy than HDR 10 Plus, as well as advanced features like Dolby Atmos sound.

Dolby Vision IQ is a newer variant of Dolby Vision that can dynamically adjust its dynamic range from scene to scene using what's called dynamic metadata. This allows for more precise control over the picture, resulting in a more immersive viewing experience. However, Samsung TVs are currently the only ones that support HDR 10 Plus, while most other TV manufacturers, including LG, support Dolby Vision and Dolby Vision IQ. The truth is, there's a lot more Dolby Vision content available than there is HDR 10 Plus, which may be a consideration for those who want to take full advantage of the latest TV technology.

Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG) is another form of HDR that broadcasters use. Most recent TVs will support HLG anyway, so it's worth noting that if you're looking at older TVs or more budget-friendly options, they may still offer this feature. Now, let's switch gears and talk about gaming. If you're buying a TV with the next-generation of consoles or PC graphics cards in mind, then you'll want a TV with low response time and ideally one that supports HDMI 2.1. This does limit you to newer, more expensive models, but HDMI 2.1 supports 4K at 120Hz and even 8K at 60Hz. A TV with HDMI 2.1 also gets extra benefits like variable refresh rate, which reduces screen tearing and makes your games feel smoother.

The most important things for gaming are to get a 4K TV because then you also get HDR, and try to get one with a low response time. Anything under 20 milliseconds in game mode is pretty good, and most reviews should give you these figures while I'm boring you to death about HDMI 2.1 (just kidding, but seriously, it's an important feature). Another advantage of gaming TVs is e-ARC or Enhanced Audio Return Channel, which allows you to send sound to a compatible soundbar or AV receiver and control the volume with your TV remote. This is pretty handy, especially if you have a separate sound system. However, bear in mind that your speaker system will also need to support 2.1.

Built-in TV speakers are generally not very good, they can vary a lot between different brands and models, so if you can't spare the cash, a good soundbar will make a world of difference. Finally, pretty much all modern TVs support their usual range of streaming apps like Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, etc. But higher-end or newer models also get additional apps like Disney+, Apple TV, etc. So be sure to check before you buy which apps are included on the TV you're looking at.

A Quick Word of Warning

Going into an actual store and having a look at TVs is always recommended because that gives you a good idea of size, design, and even sound quality. However, the problem with this is that store models are often put into store mode which over-saturates colors, turns on all processing, and basically makes TVs look artificially good so they're not always a representation of actual picture quality.

Therefore, go into a store, have a look at what you like, but then double-check reviews online to make sure you're getting a good TV.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhey guys i'm tom the tech chap and buying a new tv can be pretty overwhelming you've got to consider the size uh resolution whether it's 1080p 4k even 8k then you've got oled versus qled refresh rates response time sound quality and then of course to top it off the price your budget that's probably the most important thing so it can all get pretty stressful so i'm going to try and break down the basics of what you need to know but for starters before we get into nitty gritty there's a few sort of top level recommendations i can give you firstly and this might sound obvious but buy what you need because you can easily spend a lot of money on a tv but you may not need to and these days you can get a lot of flagship features in relatively low cost tvs at the same time though also consider if you are spending a bit more on something like a good 4k tv which is a little more future proof then you will need to upgrade again for even longer secondly and tvs like well anything that's expensive can depreciate rapidly it's not quite the same as taking a car off the lot but if you consider new flagship tvs now that say cost two grand in about nine months time they'll probably cost twelve or thirteen hundred so either by last year's models or just wait until maybe black friday when you'll get some big discounts on even the latest tvs and lastly don't forget about extras like a sound bar or even a new tv stand i mean if your new tv has great picture quality but average or poor speakers then you may want to factor in the cost of a sound bar and also if it's a larger tv say 65 inches and above then make sure the base fits on your tv stand and there's still room for a soundbar if needed but let's dive a little deeper and the first thing you need to consider when buying a tv is what size it should be tvs are measured from corner to corner there is actually an optimum screen size for a given distance which is based on how much of your vision it fills and how the eye resolves detail and there's also online calculators to help you work out yours or you could just forget all that and go with a massive tv and a tiny room for that ultimate immersive experience if you're enthusiastic idiot like me but importantly size and distance are also related to the screen's resolution or its number of pixels almost all new tvs are either 4k or full hd 1080p with 4k being the newest standard 4k tvs have four times as many pixels so it's like having four full hd screens stuck together meaning the tv can display a more detailed picture the problem is image quality is usually limited by what content you can actually watch so just because you have a 4k tv doesn't mean everything you're watching is now suddenly in 4k there is a lot more than there used to be when it first came out a few years ago and netflix and amazon youtube bbc iplayer most of the big streaming services now do upper 4k and of course also hdr content which we'll come to in a second but not everything does and you know older blu-rays so non-ultra hd blu-rays and you know just older content generally isn't 4k now to combat that slightly we do have ai upscaling which historically has been pretty rubbish but these days thanks to the more advanced processing in the tvs uh it can actually make quite a big difference but it's still a bit hit or miss having said that if you're on a tighter budget there's nothing wrong at all with a good 1080p tv however i would recommend 4k if possible because well firstly they're a lot cheaper than these to be you also get all the extra detail in 4k content it also comes in handy for gaming whether you've got a ps4 xbox one x or even the next gen console and also you get hdr pretty much all 4k tvs sort of come as a bundle but the two technologies sort of come together 4k and high dynamic range or hdr and together they can make a big difference to your picture quality and you don't have to spend a fortune pretty decent 4k hdr tvs say around 40 42 inches can set you back you know 250 300 in some cases they really have come down a lot in price but then at the other end of the spectrum we have these cutting-edge 8k tvs these can look incredible but they're very expensive and of course native 8k content is almost non-existent although i do expect that to change over the next couple of years also the actual perceived difference between 4k and 8k is a hard sell too it's definitely a case of diminishing returns plus you'd need a tv at least 65 but ideally 75 or 88 inches to really get the most out of it personally i think 4k is the sweet spot right now so we've done size resolution but now let's talk about panel type and this is where things get a little bit technical but bear with me as of right now there are two main types oled and led lcd you might have heard some other names like lg's nano cell or samsung's qled which are higher quality led lcds usually with a few nice extras personally i think oled tvs are about the best overall an oled screen can turn each pixel on or off individually so there's no backlight which means an off pixel is completely black or very nearly this means you get an almost infinite contrast ratio plus oleds tend to be thinner and lighter so they work better as a wall mounted tv downsides well oleds are usually a fair bit more expensive than your usual lcd tv they also don't get as bright up to around 700 or 800 nits usually and they can suffer from some sort of image retention aka burning now burning does exist but i've owned i think three or four lg led tvs now and i've never experienced it but if you are playing the same game for 12 hours a day and it has you know the same hud elements or you're just watching the news all day long and it has the same ticker tape then eventually you may start to see some retention so if it's in an office or a reception room maybe oled isn't a good option but for you know your usual living room in the house it's absolutely fine now samsung on the other hand have qled tvs which are based on traditional led lcd panels but with an extra quantum dot layer that boosts brightness anything from 1 000 up to a whopping 4 000 nits depending on the model and this helps if you're watching in a bright room and also means hdr content really pops qleds also boasts higher color volume so for example the white sunlight in a scene maybe a blinding 2000 nits but they're green leaves on a tree only a thousand and it means that colours on screen can fully reflect what the director and the colour editor envisioned and these samsung killer tvs are priced to compete with oleds which come from brands like lg sony and panasonic so the oled versus qlik debate has been going on for years everyone has an opinion everyone has a preference there really is no right or wrong answer for me though in my experience i think it comes down to either can you get a particularly good deal on an oled or a q-led if so go for that one but really in terms of actual use if you're watching tv or movies in a dark room or you can control the lighting quite easily then oled's going to be best option if you've got a bright room with lots of windows then the extra brightness with qled is useful but they're not your only options lg's narrow cell tvs offer an interesting balance they're more affordable than oled and like q led they're based on led lcds but have an additional nano filter that gives us improved picture quality nothing can beat the contrast of no lead but the latest now cells do come pretty close but taking a step back and all modern tvs except oleds use leds as a backlight to illuminate the screen with pricier models using more of them which is sometimes called full array local dimming and having more leds has a couple of advantages it means the screen can get brighter overall and it also allows the tv to dim a smaller area of the screen which helps contrast when you have a bright part of the image next to a dark area which is why the dark or the black areas on conventional tvs with fewer leds can often look quite grayish and washed out and just recently there's a new contender mini led mini leds are still led lcds but rather than hundreds of leds they use thousands of much smaller ones this can improve brightness allows for more even lighting across the screen and most importantly it improves contrast by allowing finer control over which areas of the screen are bright or dimmed lg showed off a mini led this year's ces and tcl have just brought out a mid-range mini led tv and while we're not quite at oled levels of contrast early reviews suggest it's pretty impressive so it'll definitely be interesting to see how these develop over the next year or so now we could spend all day talking about panel types but let's move on and i think the biggest innovation to tvs in the last five years or so is high dynamic range or hdr hdr makes the picture look more realistic by having a greater contrast range between the brightest and the darkest parts of the screen so you can basically see more detail on the shadows and the highlights and the result is content that can look more immersive and dramatic looking and a lot of recent console games also support hdr and you can find hdr shows and movies on all the major streaming services pretty much every new movie coming out now supports 4k and hdr the problem is there's a couple of competing hdr standards and most tvs only support one or two the good news though is that most 4k tvs will likely support at least hdr 10. this is the most common type but how well it's implemented can vary a lot so it's still worth doing your research about a tvs hdr picture quality but then there's hdr 10 plus and also dolby vision which is now known as dolby vision iq these are better and can dynamically adjust their dynamic range from scene to scene using what's called dynamic metadata the big deal though is that samsung tvs support hdr 10 plus whereas lg and most other tvs support dolby vision and the truth is there's a lot more dobby vision content than there is hdr 10 plus and actually that's a big reason why i do tend to stick to lg tvs or another brand that have tvs that support dobby vision or dobby iq there's also another form of hdr called hlg or hybrid log gamma which broadcasters use but most recent tvs will support this anyway now hopefully you're still with me i know that's a lot to take in so far but now let's switch gears and talk about gaming if you're buying a tv with the next generation of consoles or pc graphics cards in mind then you'll want a tv with a low response time and ideally one that supports hdmi 2.1 now this does limit you to newer more expensive models but hdmi 2.1 supports 4k at 120 hertz and even 8k at 60hz a tv with hdmi 2.1 also gets extra benefits like variable refresh rate all very technical but it helps to reduce screen tearing and make your games feel a bit smoother and you also get auto low latency mode or alm which automatically switches your tv to its low lag lowest response time gaming preset that's all very fancy and high end though and probably out the price range for most of us so the most important things for gaming are to get a 4k tv because then you also get hdr and then try to get one with a low response time anything under 20 milliseconds in game mode is pretty good and most reviews should give you these figures while i am boring you to death about hdmi 2.1 another advantage is e-arc or enhanced audio return channel the standard arc connection allows you to send sound to a compatible soundbar or av receiver and then you can control the volume with the tv remote which is pretty handy but then eoc adds support for uncompressed sound and higher quality dolby atmos but bear in mind your speaker system will also need to support 2.1 just a quick word on sound quality and generally built-in tv speakers aren't very good they can vary a lot between different brands and also the model you go for but if you can't spare the cash then a good sound bar will make a world of difference and finally pretty much all modern tvs support their usual range of streaming apps so you know netflix amazon youtube etc but higher end or newer models also get things like disney plus and apple tv so check before you buy if the tv you're looking at offers the apps that you want alternatively you could get an amazon fire stick or roku to add streaming apps to older tvs or just to give you more options a quick word of warning though because while i definitely do recommend going into an actual store and having a look at a tv because that gives you a good idea of you know size design and even sound quality the problem with that is store models are put into store mode which often over saturates colors turns on all the processing and basically makes tvs look artificially good so they're not always a good representation of actual picture quality so go into a store have a look at what you like but then double check reviews online to make sure you're getting a good tv ambreeze that was a lot to take in but if i were to go out and buy a new tv right now i think for me i would go with something like the lg c10 series they've actually just launched the 48 inch model which i think is a great size it costs about 1500 although of course if you do wait maybe six months or to black friday you'll get that even cheaper but i think that's a really good all-round tv or alternatively you could look at lg's now cell options but these are still on the pricier side so if your budget is say four to five hundred pounds then there's not much that beats toshiba's new uk 4b range which packs in a lot of features for the money alternatively tcl makes some really good value tvs so hopefully you guys found this helpful and now you know a little bit more about what to look for when buying a tv and if you did enjoy the video and want to see more from me then don't forget to hit that little subscribe button down below and also help me get to that one million subscriber mark i'm getting closer and closer uh so if you could help me out that would be amazing thank you so much for watching guys and i'll catch you next time right here on the tech chathey guys i'm tom the tech chap and buying a new tv can be pretty overwhelming you've got to consider the size uh resolution whether it's 1080p 4k even 8k then you've got oled versus qled refresh rates response time sound quality and then of course to top it off the price your budget that's probably the most important thing so it can all get pretty stressful so i'm going to try and break down the basics of what you need to know but for starters before we get into nitty gritty there's a few sort of top level recommendations i can give you firstly and this might sound obvious but buy what you need because you can easily spend a lot of money on a tv but you may not need to and these days you can get a lot of flagship features in relatively low cost tvs at the same time though also consider if you are spending a bit more on something like a good 4k tv which is a little more future proof then you will need to upgrade again for even longer secondly and tvs like well anything that's expensive can depreciate rapidly it's not quite the same as taking a car off the lot but if you consider new flagship tvs now that say cost two grand in about nine months time they'll probably cost twelve or thirteen hundred so either by last year's models or just wait until maybe black friday when you'll get some big discounts on even the latest tvs and lastly don't forget about extras like a sound bar or even a new tv stand i mean if your new tv has great picture quality but average or poor speakers then you may want to factor in the cost of a sound bar and also if it's a larger tv say 65 inches and above then make sure the base fits on your tv stand and there's still room for a soundbar if needed but let's dive a little deeper and the first thing you need to consider when buying a tv is what size it should be tvs are measured from corner to corner there is actually an optimum screen size for a given distance which is based on how much of your vision it fills and how the eye resolves detail and there's also online calculators to help you work out yours or you could just forget all that and go with a massive tv and a tiny room for that ultimate immersive experience if you're enthusiastic idiot like me but importantly size and distance are also related to the screen's resolution or its number of pixels almost all new tvs are either 4k or full hd 1080p with 4k being the newest standard 4k tvs have four times as many pixels so it's like having four full hd screens stuck together meaning the tv can display a more detailed picture the problem is image quality is usually limited by what content you can actually watch so just because you have a 4k tv doesn't mean everything you're watching is now suddenly in 4k there is a lot more than there used to be when it first came out a few years ago and netflix and amazon youtube bbc iplayer most of the big streaming services now do upper 4k and of course also hdr content which we'll come to in a second but not everything does and you know older blu-rays so non-ultra hd blu-rays and you know just older content generally isn't 4k now to combat that slightly we do have ai upscaling which historically has been pretty rubbish but these days thanks to the more advanced processing in the tvs uh it can actually make quite a big difference but it's still a bit hit or miss having said that if you're on a tighter budget there's nothing wrong at all with a good 1080p tv however i would recommend 4k if possible because well firstly they're a lot cheaper than these to be you also get all the extra detail in 4k content it also comes in handy for gaming whether you've got a ps4 xbox one x or even the next gen console and also you get hdr pretty much all 4k tvs sort of come as a bundle but the two technologies sort of come together 4k and high dynamic range or hdr and together they can make a big difference to your picture quality and you don't have to spend a fortune pretty decent 4k hdr tvs say around 40 42 inches can set you back you know 250 300 in some cases they really have come down a lot in price but then at the other end of the spectrum we have these cutting-edge 8k tvs these can look incredible but they're very expensive and of course native 8k content is almost non-existent although i do expect that to change over the next couple of years also the actual perceived difference between 4k and 8k is a hard sell too it's definitely a case of diminishing returns plus you'd need a tv at least 65 but ideally 75 or 88 inches to really get the most out of it personally i think 4k is the sweet spot right now so we've done size resolution but now let's talk about panel type and this is where things get a little bit technical but bear with me as of right now there are two main types oled and led lcd you might have heard some other names like lg's nano cell or samsung's qled which are higher quality led lcds usually with a few nice extras personally i think oled tvs are about the best overall an oled screen can turn each pixel on or off individually so there's no backlight which means an off pixel is completely black or very nearly this means you get an almost infinite contrast ratio plus oleds tend to be thinner and lighter so they work better as a wall mounted tv downsides well oleds are usually a fair bit more expensive than your usual lcd tv they also don't get as bright up to around 700 or 800 nits usually and they can suffer from some sort of image retention aka burning now burning does exist but i've owned i think three or four lg led tvs now and i've never experienced it but if you are playing the same game for 12 hours a day and it has you know the same hud elements or you're just watching the news all day long and it has the same ticker tape then eventually you may start to see some retention so if it's in an office or a reception room maybe oled isn't a good option but for you know your usual living room in the house it's absolutely fine now samsung on the other hand have qled tvs which are based on traditional led lcd panels but with an extra quantum dot layer that boosts brightness anything from 1 000 up to a whopping 4 000 nits depending on the model and this helps if you're watching in a bright room and also means hdr content really pops qleds also boasts higher color volume so for example the white sunlight in a scene maybe a blinding 2000 nits but they're green leaves on a tree only a thousand and it means that colours on screen can fully reflect what the director and the colour editor envisioned and these samsung killer tvs are priced to compete with oleds which come from brands like lg sony and panasonic so the oled versus qlik debate has been going on for years everyone has an opinion everyone has a preference there really is no right or wrong answer for me though in my experience i think it comes down to either can you get a particularly good deal on an oled or a q-led if so go for that one but really in terms of actual use if you're watching tv or movies in a dark room or you can control the lighting quite easily then oled's going to be best option if you've got a bright room with lots of windows then the extra brightness with qled is useful but they're not your only options lg's narrow cell tvs offer an interesting balance they're more affordable than oled and like q led they're based on led lcds but have an additional nano filter that gives us improved picture quality nothing can beat the contrast of no lead but the latest now cells do come pretty close but taking a step back and all modern tvs except oleds use leds as a backlight to illuminate the screen with pricier models using more of them which is sometimes called full array local dimming and having more leds has a couple of advantages it means the screen can get brighter overall and it also allows the tv to dim a smaller area of the screen which helps contrast when you have a bright part of the image next to a dark area which is why the dark or the black areas on conventional tvs with fewer leds can often look quite grayish and washed out and just recently there's a new contender mini led mini leds are still led lcds but rather than hundreds of leds they use thousands of much smaller ones this can improve brightness allows for more even lighting across the screen and most importantly it improves contrast by allowing finer control over which areas of the screen are bright or dimmed lg showed off a mini led this year's ces and tcl have just brought out a mid-range mini led tv and while we're not quite at oled levels of contrast early reviews suggest it's pretty impressive so it'll definitely be interesting to see how these develop over the next year or so now we could spend all day talking about panel types but let's move on and i think the biggest innovation to tvs in the last five years or so is high dynamic range or hdr hdr makes the picture look more realistic by having a greater contrast range between the brightest and the darkest parts of the screen so you can basically see more detail on the shadows and the highlights and the result is content that can look more immersive and dramatic looking and a lot of recent console games also support hdr and you can find hdr shows and movies on all the major streaming services pretty much every new movie coming out now supports 4k and hdr the problem is there's a couple of competing hdr standards and most tvs only support one or two the good news though is that most 4k tvs will likely support at least hdr 10. this is the most common type but how well it's implemented can vary a lot so it's still worth doing your research about a tvs hdr picture quality but then there's hdr 10 plus and also dolby vision which is now known as dolby vision iq these are better and can dynamically adjust their dynamic range from scene to scene using what's called dynamic metadata the big deal though is that samsung tvs support hdr 10 plus whereas lg and most other tvs support dolby vision and the truth is there's a lot more dobby vision content than there is hdr 10 plus and actually that's a big reason why i do tend to stick to lg tvs or another brand that have tvs that support dobby vision or dobby iq there's also another form of hdr called hlg or hybrid log gamma which broadcasters use but most recent tvs will support this anyway now hopefully you're still with me i know that's a lot to take in so far but now let's switch gears and talk about gaming if you're buying a tv with the next generation of consoles or pc graphics cards in mind then you'll want a tv with a low response time and ideally one that supports hdmi 2.1 now this does limit you to newer more expensive models but hdmi 2.1 supports 4k at 120 hertz and even 8k at 60hz a tv with hdmi 2.1 also gets extra benefits like variable refresh rate all very technical but it helps to reduce screen tearing and make your games feel a bit smoother and you also get auto low latency mode or alm which automatically switches your tv to its low lag lowest response time gaming preset that's all very fancy and high end though and probably out the price range for most of us so the most important things for gaming are to get a 4k tv because then you also get hdr and then try to get one with a low response time anything under 20 milliseconds in game mode is pretty good and most reviews should give you these figures while i am boring you to death about hdmi 2.1 another advantage is e-arc or enhanced audio return channel the standard arc connection allows you to send sound to a compatible soundbar or av receiver and then you can control the volume with the tv remote which is pretty handy but then eoc adds support for uncompressed sound and higher quality dolby atmos but bear in mind your speaker system will also need to support 2.1 just a quick word on sound quality and generally built-in tv speakers aren't very good they can vary a lot between different brands and also the model you go for but if you can't spare the cash then a good sound bar will make a world of difference and finally pretty much all modern tvs support their usual range of streaming apps so you know netflix amazon youtube etc but higher end or newer models also get things like disney plus and apple tv so check before you buy if the tv you're looking at offers the apps that you want alternatively you could get an amazon fire stick or roku to add streaming apps to older tvs or just to give you more options a quick word of warning though because while i definitely do recommend going into an actual store and having a look at a tv because that gives you a good idea of you know size design and even sound quality the problem with that is store models are put into store mode which often over saturates colors turns on all the processing and basically makes tvs look artificially good so they're not always a good representation of actual picture quality so go into a store have a look at what you like but then double check reviews online to make sure you're getting a good tv ambreeze that was a lot to take in but if i were to go out and buy a new tv right now i think for me i would go with something like the lg c10 series they've actually just launched the 48 inch model which i think is a great size it costs about 1500 although of course if you do wait maybe six months or to black friday you'll get that even cheaper but i think that's a really good all-round tv or alternatively you could look at lg's now cell options but these are still on the pricier side so if your budget is say four to five hundred pounds then there's not much that beats toshiba's new uk 4b range which packs in a lot of features for the money alternatively tcl makes some really good value tvs so hopefully you guys found this helpful and now you know a little bit more about what to look for when buying a tv and if you did enjoy the video and want to see more from me then don't forget to hit that little subscribe button down below and also help me get to that one million subscriber mark i'm getting closer and closer uh so if you could help me out that would be amazing thank you so much for watching guys and i'll catch you next time right here on the tech chat\n"