For years, the TV industry has sold us on the idea that a better screen automatically means a better picture. Samsung’s latest Prime Video partnership makes a more specific argument: today’s high-end TVs need smarter instructions from the content itself.

Starting in August 2026, Prime Video is becoming the first streaming service to offer HDR10+ ADVANCED on supported titles, initially for select Samsung 2026 TVs. The new format is an evolution of HDR10+, designed to use richer scene-by-scene data to make HDR images brighter, preserve more detail, and handle motion with a little more intelligence.

That may sound like another acronym in the already crowded world of TV formats, but the underlying promise is fairly practical. On the right TV, a bright outdoor scene should retain punch without bleaching out fine detail. A dimly lit drama should hold onto texture in shadows instead of turning into a murky gray mess. And during a fast football match or action sequence, the set should be able to smooth motion where it helps without making a movie look like a daytime soap opera.

HDR, or high dynamic range, is fundamentally about the gap between the darkest and brightest parts of an image. Standard HDR10 establishes a baseline for that range, while HDR10+ adds dynamic metadata: extra instructions that can change from scene to scene, rather than applying one broad setting across an entire film or episode. HDR10+ ADVANCED expands that toolkit further, adding capabilities around brightness, local tone mapping, color, genre-aware optimization and motion handling.

Samsung is putting two features at the center of this rollout. The first, Enhanced Overall Brightness, uses extended statistical metadata to help compatible TVs better use their available brightness across the tonal range. Samsung says its AI-driven tone mapping is meant to retain shadow detail in dark scenes while also delivering the extra luminance that bright sports and action programming can demand.

The second feature, Intelligent Motion Smoothing, is arguably the more interesting one because it tries to address a perennial TV-viewing complaint. Motion interpolation can make fast action easier to follow, but when applied too aggressively to film, it can erase the natural cadence of 24-frames-per-second cinema. HDR10+ ADVANCED allows scene-by-scene metadata to guide compatible displays on how much smoothing, if any, to apply, with the stated goal of preserving a filmic look for movies while reducing judder in fast-moving material.

In other words, this is not simply Samsung turning on its usual motion-processing settings by default. The ambition is for the video stream to carry information about how a particular scene should be handled, giving the television more context than a conventional blanket setting can provide. Whether that consistently produces a better result will depend on Samsung’s implementation and the quality of the encoded titles, but it is a more thoughtful approach than treating a slow dialogue scene and a high-speed sports replay exactly the same way.

There is also some history behind the announcement. Prime Video was the first major streaming platform to launch HDR10+ support in December 2017, making its HDR catalog available in the format on Samsung’s then-current UHD TVs. Samsung says the HDR10+ ecosystem now includes 183 adopter companies and more than 22,000 certified products, though format support has always varied by device maker, TV model and streaming service.

For viewers, the important caveat is compatibility. HDR10+ ADVANCED will arrive first on select premium Samsung TV models from the company’s 2026 lineup, and only supported Prime Video titles will benefit. It also will not work when Filmmaker Mode is enabled, according to Samsung’s fine print – a notable limitation for movie enthusiasts who use that mode specifically to minimize TV-side image processing.

The announcement therefore does not mean every Prime Video show will suddenly look radically different, nor will it transform an older television. But it does reflect where premium TV technology is heading. Display hardware has rapidly improved in peak brightness, color volume and processing capability, while the industry is increasingly looking for ways to deliver content-aware instructions that help those panels make better decisions in real time.

Samsung and Prime Video are pitching HDR10+ ADVANCED as a more adaptive kind of HDR: one that recognizes that a sunlit stadium, a neon-lit action movie and a shadowy prestige drama create very different challenges for a television. If the format works as intended, the upgrade should feel less like a flashy new picture preset and more like a screen that knows when to get out of the way.