- Eclipsa Video is a new HDR standard coming to phones first
- It is backed by experts from Google, Apple and NBC Universal
- For now, it won’t compete directly against Dolby Vision or HDR10+
There’s another High Dynamic Range (HDR) display standard to know about, developed by experts from Apple, Google and NBCUniversal – and it looks set to provide some open-source (and license-free) competition to Dolby Vision, albeit on phones and laptops rather than TVs.
It’s called Eclipsa Video, and as FlatpanelsHD reports, it was announced without much fanfare. As a companion to Eclipsa Audio, which you may remember launched in 2025, and based on the technical standard SMPTE 2094-50.
One of the main goals is to fix a major HDR pain point: HDR is designed to balance highlights, shadows and contrast so nothing is lost, but device screens all have different brightness limits. This means that HDR signaling can be confused, leading to a less than ideal viewing experience.
That shouldn’t happen with Eclipsa Video. The standard includes metadata protocols to report to the video what the limits of the display device are so that the HDR can be tailored accordingly. “The video you see looks exactly as the creator intended,” Google’s Roshan Baliga said last month.
The upcoming Dolby Vision 2 standard, meanwhile, aims to tackle the same exact problem while adding several other upgrades. Especially on cheaper, smaller-capacity televisions, you should get better results from HDR, provided both the TV and the content provider support the standard.
Coming to phones first
Support for Eclipsa Video will be required at both the hardware and software levels, with the initial focus on phones, according to the official press release. Approved devices are expected to start appearing this year – and given Apple’s involvement, it leaves us wondering if the iPhone 18 Pro might be first in line.
The press release promises “stellar video performance on compatible smartphones, laptops, desktops and more,” and it’s perhaps telling that TVs aren’t mentioned—perhaps the intention isn’t to disrupt the current dominance of the Dolby Vision and HDR10+ standards on larger screens, or at least not right away.
How exactly it fits into the current landscape isn’t clear, and right now we don’t have many details to go on. The Eclipsa Video standard is actually being put under the control of the HDR10+ Consortium, which has confirmed that future devices can be certified for both HDR10+ and Eclipsa Video.
That suggests we’re looking at something that complements rather than competes with the HDR10+ standard, at least for smaller screens, although HDR10+ will also remain its own separate entity.
As for Dolby Vision and Dolby Vision 2, given Apple’s historical support for Dolby Vision and the fact that the NBCUniversal-owned Peacock streaming service has already announced that it supports the upcoming Dolby Vision 2, Dolby may not have too much to worry about…yet.
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