Samsung's top-end SUHD TV, the 65in curved JS9000, has landed in the Expert Reviews office, and although we can't wait to start testing and bring you a full verdict on the new Tizen-powered smart TV system and 4K picture quality, we wanted to give you a sneak peek at one of the TV's party tricks: Support for High Dynamic Range video, otherwise known as HDR.
You're going to be hearing a lot about HDR video over the coming months, as it is now officially part of the Ultra HD Blu-ray standard and will soon be supported on a wide range of TVs. Effectively, HDR video has a wider brightness range between the whitest whites and blackest blacks of an image. This is much more representative of what our eyes are capable of processing in terms of light range, so the sun seems brighter, light reflections are more realistic and scenes with both dark and bright spots preserve all the detail, rather than losing clarity at one end to boost detail in the other. HDR uses the same DCI colour space as digital cinema projectors, rather than the outdated rec.709 colour space, and the larger luminance range opens up a much wider colour palette, so you aren't just getting brighter pictures - you're getting more vibrant images with greater levels of contrast.
The JS9000 has a 10-bit colour panel and is capable of outputting a peak brightness of 600nit, which is significantly more than traditional TVs. The flagship JS9500 goes even further, managing a 1,000nit peak, but some HDR prototypes can reach obscenely bright levels. Dolby's Vision prototype manages something close to 4,000nit, although it requires so much additional cooling that this kind of technology in the home is still years away. In the here and now, however, 600nit is still more than enough to see what a difference HDR will make to your viewing habits.
When Samsung dropped off the JS9000 we were shown clips from specially mastered versions of The Life of Pi and Exodus: Gods and Kings. The sunlight glinting off the ocean in The Life of Pi looked incredibly natural, illuminating the scene with impressive peak brightness, although we thought the effect was more prominent on the gold chainmail armour on the Pharaoh's guards in Exodus. It glinted in a way that simply can't be achieved without HDR and, combined with the 4K resolution, gives the impression of even more detail, making clips truly pop out of the screen.
Lightning strikes during the climactic parting of the Red sea were brilliantly bright, creating a massive contrast with the dark clouds and churning water, without losing any detail in order to achieve the high brightness. Unfortunately copyright issues mean Samsung couldn't leave any HDR footage with us, which is why we're waiting for approved video to arrive next week before bringing you a full review, but from today's brief look it's clear HDR could be the next must-have feature once 4K TVs outnumber 1080p sets.
We could be waiting a while to get hold of HDR content, however. Dolby's Dolby Vision, Philips HDR technology and the UHD alliance all have different ideas of what standards should be used, and until Ultra HD Blu-ray arrives towards the end of the year the only alternative will be streaming video services. Netflix is planning to release HDR content eventually, with all its Originals now being filmed with HDR in mind and Marco Polo set to stream in HDR at some point later this year, but has yet to set a timeframe. The early smart TV build on our review unit also has yet to receive its Netflix app.
We're keeping our fingers crossed that this all gets sorted out soon, though - the effects are incredible and we want as much content as possible to put the JS9000 through its paces.