HDR Technology Redefines Video Delivery as Streaming Wars Intensify
Codec Provider Works to Unify Fragmented Distribution Pipelines and Safeguard Ad Revenue
As streaming services compete for subscriber loyalty and broadcasters scramble to modernize aging infrastructure, High Dynamic Range (HDR) video technology has emerged as one of the industry’s most consequential battlegrounds. At the center of that fight are the codec providers.
MainConcept, a codec technology developer with more than three decades of experience, is one of the firms shaping how HDR content gets encoded, delivered, and displayed across a dizzying range of devices and platforms. Frank Schönberger, senior product manager at MainConcept GmbH, says the stakes for broadcasters and streaming providers offering content to mobile phones, tablets, and televisions around the world have never been higher.
“Premium content is a key differentiator,” Schönberger said. “In a constantly growing streaming services market, and a rapidly changing broadcasting space, you need to stand out against competitors. HDR is emerging as a technology that offers an opportunity for establishing distinction by delivering enhanced viewing experiences.”
This explains how, according to Global Market Insights, a high dynamic range market that was valued at $41.79 billion in 2024 will grow at a CAGR of 27.2% to reach $460.94 billion by 2034.
HDR technology expands the range of brightness and color that a video signal can carry, producing images with brighter highlights, deeper shadows, and more vivid colors than the Standard Dynamic Range, or SDR, format that has defined television for decades. Modern televisions almost universally support HDR. The problem is that hundreds of millions of older devices do not, and the lion’s share of legacy content libraries offered by streaming services and broadcasters were produced in SDR.
That gap creates a costly operational dilemma. Maintaining two entirely separate workflows, one for SDR and one for HDR, doubles hardware requirements and strains budgets. Schönberger said the industry is pushing hard toward a single-stream solution that can serve both audiences simultaneously.
That, he says, is where Advanced HDR by Technicolor comes in. This solution uses embedded metadata and machine learning to deliver a single stream as HDR on devices that support it, while automatically falling back to SDR on those that do not, protecting investments in legacy infrastructure without sacrificing image quality on modern displays.
“If you only have one HDR pipeline, you can drop the SDR pipeline completely,” he said. “That’s a huge benefit for both broadcast and streaming service providers. And on the viewer side, they benefit because regardless of what device they have, they’re always getting the highest quality stream that is possible.”
The challenge of converting legacy SDR content into HDR-compatible formats is particularly acute for Free Ad-Supported Streaming Television, or FAST, services. These platforms have built large audiences by offering free access to older catalog content, from 1970s sitcoms and 1990s dramas to more modern blockbusters. But that content arrives in a patchwork of formats, color spaces, resolutions, and aspect ratios that were never designed to coexist in a single distribution pipeline.
Managing Multi-Generational Content Complexity for A Modern Audience
Legacy content, he explained, often carries inconsistent color metadata, varying gamma settings, and brightness levels that do not meet HDR mastering standards. Content that was originally shot on analog formats adds further complications. Upscaling, de-interlacing, and color remapping all introduce processing demands that can threaten the low-latency performance that live scheduling and dynamic ad insertion require.
That last point matters enormously to FAST operators, whose entire business model depends on advertising. If an HDR program is interrupted by an SDR commercial, the jarring brightness shift is not just an aesthetic problem. It is a failure that undermines the premium experience that operators are selling to both viewers and advertisers.
“Users who pay a lot for premium content or a huge live sports event would be very frustrated if there is a break in the HDR processing,” Schönberger said. “The ad must be HDR in the same way as the premium content.”
MainConcept’s codec handles that conversion on the fly, translating incoming SDR advertising feeds into HDR output without introducing visible transitions or latency. Schönberger said the technology exists to execute that process seamlessly, but it requires some integration work on the operator side.
Adding to the complexity is the fact that HDR itself is not a single standard. The market currently supports at least six distinct formats, including HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision, Hybrid Log-Gamma (HLG), PQ, and Advanced HDR by Technicolor. Each format carries different technical requirements, and playback devices do not always support every option.
MainConcept’s approach centers on building support for all of those formats directly into its encoder software development kits, which are licensed to broadcasters, OTT platforms, production companies, and operators in industries ranging from security surveillance to medical imaging.
That said, Schönberger highlighted Advanced HDR by Technicolor as a format with particular promise for operators navigating the SDR-to-HDR transition. The technology can take an existing eight-bit SDR feed and generate HDR output from it, meaning operators do not necessarily need to overhaul their production infrastructure to begin delivering HDR content. It also supports HDR-to-dynamic-HDR conversion, adjusting metadata on a per-frame basis to maximize image quality across different display types.
“You can stick to your existing eight-bit SDR infrastructure,” Schönberger said. “You can easily turn your legacy SDR content into HDR, and in the end you only have one stream.”
The format has already been adopted into broadcast standards. It is part of the TV 2.5 standard in Brazil and is included in ATSC 3.0, the next-generation broadcast specification being deployed across the United States. Several U.S. broadcasters, including Sinclair and Gray Media, have already put the technology into production.
Beyond traditional broadcast and streaming, Schönberger sees HDR playing a growing role in augmented reality, virtual reality, and extended reality applications, particularly as wearable devices become more capable. The deeper blacks, brighter highlights, and expanded color palette that HDR enables translate directly into more convincing immersive environments.
“The audience wants to dive completely into the premium content they’ve paid for,” he said.
“HDR extends the contrast ratio and color palette beyond SDR. It shows a more realistic, more detailed, and more immersive picture quality regardless of whether devices support standard definition (SD), high definition (HD) or ultra-high definition (UHD) content.”
Preparing for an HDR Future
Schönberger said the trajectory of the industry is clearly toward dynamic HDR, which adjusts image parameters frame by frame rather than applying a single static setting to an entire program. Doing that at scale, particularly for live content, will increasingly require automated and AI-assisted processing tools.
“Doing this on the fly requires AI-driven or automated tools,” he said. “Dynamic HDR is the future.”
For an industry still managing the long tail of SDR infrastructure while racing to deliver premium HDR experiences, the codec layer may be the least visible but most essential piece of the puzzle.
Watch the Full Vidcast Interview Here.