NFL live streaming is in full swing and week one just ended. Last week we watched football on FOX, CBS, NBC, ESPN, and, like me, NFL Sunday Ticket over the weekend, with the addition of Prime Video for Week 2.

This season, all remaining Thursday Night Football games will be available exclusively on Amazon's streaming platform. Not too bad if you already have an Amazon Prime subscription, since Prime Video is included in Prime Video, but others may scramble to get a Prime Video subscription in time for Thursday night kickoff! ...

But it's not all bad news; to watch full NFL games, you'll need to add another streaming service, but Amazon is offering an upgrade that's worth your money. Amazon has announced on its blog that Prime Video's Thursday night football coverage will be in native HDR, the company announced. This is a new addition this season and is a significant upgrade in terms of picture quality. In fact, on most TVs, Thursday Night Football may be the best picture quality of any NFL broadcast thanks to this enhancement.

HDR (High Dynamic Range) is a buzzword often used in display technology and photography. But in essence, HDR uses pixels of an image to produce higher quality contrast and color than standard dynamic range (SDR) images. This allows for a more realistic image to be projected on the TV screen when watching TV shows, movies, or in this case, sports.

There are four common HDR formats: HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision, and HLG. HDR10 and HLG are both freely available open HDR standards. However, it is unlikely that Amazon will use HLG, since it is designed for terrestrial broadcasts, which are more likely to be used for HDR10+ and HLG for HDR10+. [HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, however, are proprietary standards; HDR10+ was developed by Samsung but is available on a wide variety of TVs; HDR10+ supports higher brightness (up to 4,000 nits) and uses dynamic metadata rather than the fixed metadata used in HDR10 HDR10 is improved by using dynamic metadata instead of the fixed metadata used in HDR10. This means that color and brightness information can be adjusted on a scene-by-scene or frame-by-frame basis. [Dolby Vision, developed by Dolby and available on a variety of televisions, also uses dynamic metadata. However, it is sometimes preferred by directors and editors because it allows the metadata to be set according to the director's or editor's intentions, rather than improving existing SDR video.

There are potential problems with Prime Video's Thursday Night Football broadcast upgrade. First, your TV must support the HDR format in order to view this upgrade. If you have the best TV, or really any 4K TV, your TV likely supports some HDR formats, but you need to check your specific TV to be sure. [But unfortunately, we don't know which HDR formats Amazon uses. As mentioned above, not all four are always supported on TVs, a problem that affects even flagship TVs. In many cases, TVs have HDR10 and HLG, and only HDR10+ or Dolby Vision, but not both. For example, if Amazon uses Dolby Vision and you have a new Samsung TV, you may miss out on this HDR upgrade.

My guess is that Amazon will use HDR10. Because if they are using their own HDR format, I would think that Samsung and Dolby would want to publicize it in their announcements. Furthermore, while HDR10+ and Dolby Vision are superior, HDR10 is much more widely available. Given Amazon's desire for positive buzz around this announcement, it would be an odd decision to limit the number of viewers who can experience this upgrade. Hopefully, I am right and we can all enjoy Thursday Night Football in HDR this week.