Parks Associates: HDR Is Becoming an Expected Part of Premium Video

What the white paper says

The paper, titled High Dynamic Range and the Future of Video, looks at HDR's growing role across the entertainment ecosystem. HDR enhances brightness and contrast and produces richer colors and more lifelike images, according to the release. Parks Associates argues that broader device support, growing content availability and advances in production and distribution are pushing the technology into the mainstream.

The firm sees an opening for television manufacturers, streaming services and content creators to differentiate themselves through picture quality. Michael Goodman, Director, Entertainment Research at Parks Associates, said HDR "gives the entertainment industry a powerful way to make improvements in picture quality." In his view, it helps manufacturers show the value of advanced displays, and gives streaming services and content owners a chance to deliver a more compelling experience and preserve the creative intent of their programming.

Lionel Oisel, Head of Video Labs at InterDigital, said consumers may not always know HDR by name, but they recognize the experience it enables. He added that innovation in HDR, video compression and delivery will be fundamental to making a consistent premium experience possible on every screen.

Four developments shaping HDR's next phase

The white paper identifies several trends:

• Smart TVs are the foundation. They are the primary streaming video device in 62% of US internet households with a connected TV device.
• Live sports and gaming expand HDR's relevance. These experiences showcase HDR's ability to reproduce bright highlights, detailed shadows and realistic imagery, while pushing improvements in production and real-time processing.
• Mobile viewing extends HDR beyond the television. Mobile phones account for 24% of weekly video consumption, with tablets adding another 11%.
• Technology advances improve delivery economics. AI-assisted image processing, cloud-based production and next-generation codecs such as Versatile Video Coding (VVC) will simplify workflows and deliver HDR more efficiently.

Challenges: format fragmentation and cost

The research also points to obstacles that need continued collaboration. Differences in HDR formats, device capabilities and service implementations can produce inconsistent viewing experiences. Content providers, meanwhile, must manage the cost and complexity of supporting multiple formats as audiences move from standard to HDR in their video viewing.

These issues matter because the premise of the paper is that HDR should become a dependable baseline rather than a feature that looks different from one device or service to the next.

What it means for the industry

For manufacturers, streamers and content owners, the paper presents HDR as a way to compete on picture quality, provided the format and delivery challenges are handled. Because viewing now spans living-room TVs, phones and tablets, consistency across screens is a central theme.

Parks Associates and InterDigital will highlight the research at Future of Video: Business of Streaming, an executive conference for the streaming and video industries on November 17-18 in Marina del Rey, California.