Roger Quero, Liwei Guo, Jeff Watts, Joseph McCormick, Agata Opalach, Anush Moorthy
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 dynamic metadata included in our HDR10+ content improves the quality and accuracy of the picture when viewed on these devices.
Nearly a decade ago, we made a bold move to be a pioneering adopter of High Dynamic Range (HDR) technology. HDR enables images to have more details, vivid colors, and improved realism. We began producing our shows and movies in HDR, encoding them in HDR, and streaming them in HDR for our members. We were confident that it would greatly enhance our members’ viewing experience, and unlock new creative visions — and we were right! In the last five years, HDR streaming has increased by more than 300%, while the number of HDR-configured devices watching Netflix has more than doubled. Since launching HDR with season one of Marco Polo, Netflix now has over 11,000 hours of HDR titles for members to immerse themselves in.
We continue to enhance member joy while maintaining creative vision by adding support for HDR10+. This will further augment Netflix’s growing HDR ecosystem, preserve creative intent on even more devices, and provide a more immersive viewing experience.
We enabled HDR10+ on Netflix using the AV1 video codec that was standardized by the Alliance for Open Media (AOM) in 2018. AV1 is one of the most efficient codecs available today. We previously enabled AV1 encoding for SDR content, and saw tremendous value for our members, including higher and more consistent visual quality, lower play delay and increased streaming at the highest resolution. AV1-SDR is already the second most streamed codec at Netflix, behind H.264/AVC, which has been around for over 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.
To enhance our offering, we have been adding HDR10+ streams to both new releases and existing popular HDR titles. AV1-HDR10+ now accounts for 50% of all eligible viewing hours. We will continue expanding our HDR10+ offerings with the goal of providing an HDR10+ experience for all HDR titles by the end of this year¹.
Today, the industry recognizes three prevalent HDR formats: Dolby Vision, HDR10, and HDR10+. For all three HDR Formats, metadata is embedded in the content, serving as instructions to guide the playback device — whether it’s a TV, mobile device, or computer — on how to display the image.
HDR10 is the most widely adopted HDR format, supported by all HDR devices. HDR10 uses static metadata that is defined once for the entire content detailing aspects such as the maximum content light level (MaxCLL),
