Google Play and Vizio to support HDR10+

Samsung recently announced Google Play and Vizio now support HDR10+. The two join 92 other adopters of the high dynamic range format, which is on par with Dolby Vision, but with some differences. Dolby Vision offers 12-bit colour, while HDR10+ comes with 10-bit colour.

The update means Google Play Movies & TV can now stream HDR10+ content from its UHD collection. But Samsung hasn't specified which titles will get the feature. 

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Warner Bros will support new Samsung-led HDR10+ standard

You may or may not have heard of the newest High Dynamic Range (HDR) standard to come out in the past year. But now its three founding companies—Samsung, Panasonic, and 20^th Century Fox—just shared some updates on HDR10+ and what we can expect from the platform. This Dolby Vision competitor is said to soon make its way to “content companies, ultra-high definition TVs, Blu-ray disc players/recorders and set-top box manufacturers, as well as SoC vendors.” Moving forward, the three companies will be incorporating the standard in “all future Ultra HD movie releases, selected TVs, Ultra HD Blu-ray player/recorders, and other products.” And unlike its Dolby counterpart, Samsung, in a press release, emphasizes that using HDR10+ will be royalty-free and will only require a “nominal annual administration fee” to use the standard. Updates about the new format will be put up on this new site.

One of the bigger announcements, though, is that Warner Bros. Home Entertainment will be enabling this dynamic metadata solution to its content for Samsung, Panasonic and other HDR10+ capable 4K HDR TVs. Amazon Prime Video already supports the standard with its Prime Video HDR library already offering HDR10+ and can be seen on Prime Originals like The Grand Tour, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Jean-Claude Van Johnson, The Tick and The Man in the High Castle.

Panasonic promises to keep up with Tesla Model 3 demand

Panasonic is ready to put in the work and the money to make sure they meet the demand for batteries of the Tesla Model 3. Panasonic is pouring in US$1.6 billion into the Gigafactory needed to for the production of the batteries. The Japanese electronics company promises it will “do [its] best” to speed up investment so Tesla can meet its accelerated production goals. Right now, Tesla plans to make 500,000 cars per year by 2018 instead of 2020.

It doesn’t come as a surprise that Panasonic is willing to spend on this partnership as they also stand to profit from the flood of Model 3 sales. This move also shows a major shift in strategy for Panasonic as this’ll have them moving away from being dependent on the volatile consumer electronics market and into the relatively stable car industry. We can’t say yet if the Model 3 will fare well in the market but this gives Panasonic a way in to the industry.

Source: Engadget

Panasonic donates 50,000 Solar Lanterns under Its "100 Thousand Solar Lanterns Project"

 More than 1.2 billion people* worldwide still live without access to electricity. Lack of electric lighting severely impacts health, education, income-generation and safety at nighttime.

Panasonic Corporation's "100 Thousand Solar Lanterns Project" has passed its halfway mark with the cumulative number of solar lanterns donated exceeding 50,000 on March 10, 2016. This project began in February 2013 with a donation of 3,000 units to Myanmar, followed by donations to other areas in Asia and Africa without access to electricity.

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