First, here is a good quick article on the difference of 8-bit vs 10-bit colour. Give it a quick one, two. Thumbs up the guy that took the time to write that.
My opinion is as follows.
First HDR should not be called HDR. It should be called Colour+ or something. Because it’s not what traditional HDR is or does. There are 3 HDR formats as of this writing, HDR, HDR10+ and, Dolby Vision.
HDR offers a singular benefit which is the colour depth, but as is with Dolby and Samsungs HDR10+ everything else about it is a gimmick. Just like Curved screens, and the likes of 8K Televisions. Perhaps 8K is useful for larger cinema screens but to me as a consumer 8K won’t offer any value in the near future. HDR offers a singular benefit, this is the wider colour gamut or depth(10 bit vs 8 bit). This has been a long ways in the making and started in the days of DVD past.
While yes the capability of the wider colour gamut or depth is welcome, things such as changing meta data is riding on borderline gimmicky and stupid. Also I would prefer there be no changing meta data in my video streams, thank you very much. I’d rather my Television have less capability to spy on me than they already do. I’m looking at you Samsung. I don’t own any Samsung products by the way, and there is a good reason for that, explosions and spying aside, I don’t buy into what they sell. While LG has adopted HDR and Dolby Vision(Netflix), Samsung has opted for HDR and HDR10+(Amazon). Amazon opted to adopt the HDR10+ standard.
I have experienced both Netflix and Amazon HDR, except for HDR10+ on Amazon. Based on my experience I will say this; the quality of Netflix and Dolby Vision leaves something to be desired. While it can offer benefits for edge lit LCD panels I see no benefit for OLED TVs. The idea behind Dolby Vision is such that it adjusts the contrast and brightness levels so that one can see the darks or shadows in a scene better and with greater detail than before. Is this true? Yes, somewhat but it comes at a price. To me it reeks of gimmick that only Edge Lit LCD panels benefit from. Let me explain. The problem with edge lit LCDs is that if a single pixel on the screen needs to be lit, and depending on the TV weather it has local dimming zones or not, the entire screen or sections of it will be lit up with the back light to provide illumination to the single pixel. LCD pixels are a passive technology and do not emit light. That is not the case with OLED. This means that on LCD/LED/QLED panels you will see a beam of light dropping down from the top to the bottom for a single pixel on an edge lit LCD panel, or LED panel as the manufacturers like to call them. QLED does something similar as well. While Dolby Vision aims to minimize this. Testing DV(Dolby Vision) on the LG 65UH8500 which is an LED edge lit LCD TV, this effect is very noticeable. Dolby Vision somewhat corrected this problem, but I also noticed that the contrast, the whites and, overall brightness of the image suffered in DV. Having watched and tested many DV shows, it was all the same across the board. Most noticeably in Luke Cage, DV rendered the image and show unwatchable and I had to make adjustments to the DV settings. Note that this was a calibrated television screen. In Marco Polo it did improve the dark scenes, however during the bright scenes I noticed that the colours and whites were way off. The whites weren’t white anymore and colour had a dark brown tint to it. But then again Netflix streaming quality is nothing to rave about. While Amazon streaming quality is slightly better than Netflix, this is only true for their UHD stuff. Also Amazon’s HDR implementation is a little simpler than DV and having watched the Grand Tour in HDR I can say, it’s just ok. HDR is simple and does what it’s supposed to without gimmicks. It adds a larger colour gamut, while HDR10+ and Dolby Vision add changing meta data to the stream. Thanks but no thanks.
The likes of 4 HDR standards exist right now, or soon will. Each vying for TV supremacy.
This smells to me like the next format war, Beta Max vs VHS, HD-DVD vs Blu-Ray, well Dolby Vision vs HDR10+ is here. So get ready folks, get ready to stop buying new TVs because a new format war is about to come to your living room.
Also did you know that that UHD television in your living room will not display UHD Television content for a long time, if ever, except for a couple channels. For the most part TV producers opted for HDR instead of UHD resolution. On top of that, said live television HDR format is a new standard which has not been added to any TV manufacturers lineups yet. Planned obsolescence? Maybe. Who knows maybe it’s just a firmware update, but if you’re dreaming of watching sports in UHD, think again, it might not ever happen. Yes Direct TV streamed some UHD channels last year, but have a look around, most Television broadcasts are still in 720p or 1080i, nothing has changed in the last little while.
So as it stands right now the only benefit HDR offers is via UHD-BluRay. You get uncompressed HDR video with wider colour range and uncompressed audio. However, UHD-BluRays aren’t flying off the shelves either. I have a sneaking suspicion that UHD BluRay will go the way of BetaMax, HD-DVD, and the Dodo. As such I could not recommend a new LCD panel that supports HDR at the moment to anyone. Let alone UHD LCD panel, that is unless you plan to use it with a PC. There really is no benefit at the moment to the average consumer purchasing a UHD TV unless you are buying a large format screeen, 80″ + I’d say. Be patient, sit and wait, watch, and then make an informed purchase.
If you’re are going to upgrade your LCD panel do it because you’re upgrading it to an OLED TV. That is the single best upgrade you can make to your TV, you will be stunned at the difference between OLED and LCD. Once you look at OLED you will realize how trashy LCD, LED and, Samsung’s QLED panels really are. This is truly the future of Television displays, and Goggles rumored $800 Million investment in LGs OLED technologies is proof of that. Christ, go to any robotics hobby shops and they are stocking OLED monochrome displays, some even colour. OLED is the future display tech for the time being. QLED or Quantum dot Light Emitting Diodes are just LCD panels with a gimmicky name to try and fool you into buying Samsung’s panels which are LCD/LED edge lit displays of the last 10 years past.
OLED or go home I say. This is what the industry should be concentrating on.
References:
http://www.techhive.com/article/171223/10_bit_color.html
http://www.digitaltrends.com/home-theater/directv-4k-uhd-masters-broadcast/
http://www.trustedreviews.com/opinions/hdr-tv-high-dynamic-television-explained
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultra-high-definition_television#Americas
Nerd Drivel 
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