Samsung is taking advantage of the last few days before CES to confirm the upcoming arrival of its first HDR10 + Gaming panels. Real competitor for Dolby Vision Gaming or a bad idea?
Samsung is a firm believer in HDR10 +. The manufacturer has just announced its very first “HDR10 + Gaming Standard” devices, a version of this wide dynamic range standard specially designed for video games.
This technology would concern the brand’s new range of QLED televisions as well as a whole new series of monitors specially designed for video games. Technically, this standard makes it possible to store even more metadata than the standard HDR10. It would also be compatible with Variable Refresh Rate technology, which dampens the phenomenon of tearing and would work above 120 Hz.
Obviously, this represents a significant flow of data. To benefit from it in a video game, it will therefore be necessary to suitable material, especially on the graphics card side. You will need a relatively recent Nvidia graphics card (AMD cards are not supported), that is to say from the series 30X0, 20X0 or 16X0.
The set will logically be presented on the occasion of CES 2022, which should normally start on Wednesday, January 5 … unless Samsung also resigns itself to packing up. But while waiting for a possible about-face, the manufacturer is still part of the program. For the moment, he continues to show his desire to be present at the show.
And to show off this new technology, the manufacturer has partnered with studios Game Mechanic Studios and Saber Interactive. Their Happy Trails and the Kidnapped Princess, Redout 2 and Pinball FX games will serve as technical demos on this occasion.
Competition from Dolby Vision Gaming
This standard is placed as a competitor of the Dolby Vision Gaming standard. And we have to admit that this is a very surprising choice from a strategic point of view. Indeed, technologies of this type are not easy to deploy; on the consumer side there are several boxes to check before you can take advantage of it. You not only need a sufficiently powerful machine, but also a monitor specially built around this technology. And all this to play a game in which the developers had to make the effort to integrate this standard manually.
Standardizing such a standard is therefore extremely difficult. The challenge is to get to the market early to colonize it before the competition. But here it is: if the HDR10 + standard is doing like a charm in the world of the seventh art, the same cannot be said of video games. At present, Dolby Vision Gaming seems far ahead on this point. This standard has already been adopted by several major brands such as LG, one of Samsung’s main competitors. It is also being deployed on the side of many studios which use it for their AAA games.
A battle lost in advance?
This multiplication of standards could quickly turn into a puzzle for users. In addition, it also represents a big extra workload for builders and developers; there is therefore a good chance that we are witnessing some form of natural selection. In the end, one of the contenders will likely end up winning the lion’s share, much to the chagrin of the competition. And in this race, it is undoubtedly Dolby’s proposal that seems to have gone the best.
So is the fight already lost in advance? It’s still too early to tell, so it will be quite interesting to see how Samsung plans to go about holding the high mark on Dolby. With a little luck, we will see more clearly on the occasion of CES 2022, which will start on January 5.
