THX Opens Asia Labs With First Dual HDR10+ and Eclipsa Audio Test Centre in China

Just days after StereoNET asked whether THX still stands for anything beyond a licensing fee, the company has delivered a compelling answer. THX has opened two new audio-video technology laboratories in Asia — THX Shenzhen and THX Taipei — and the Shenzhen facility has been approved as the first dual Authorised Test Centre in China for both HDR10+ and Eclipsa Audio certification.

That last part is worth pausing on, because it could matter a great deal for what ends up in your next television or soundbar.

Eclipsa Audio is the immersive audio standard developed jointly by Google and Samsung. Based on the Immersive Audio Model and Formats (IAMF) specification, it encodes a multichannel, object-based audio structure capable of up to twenty-eight input channels in a single bitstream, rendering dynamically across TV speakers, soundbars, and headphones. It is royalty-free and platform-agnostic — an open alternative to Dolby Atmos that removes licensing costs for both manufacturers and content creators.

Having certification infrastructure in Shenzhen — where Hisense, TCL, and dozens of other consumer electronics companies are headquartered or have primary R&D — means those manufacturers can now test and certify Eclipsa Audio and HDR10+ devices locally, without shipping hardware to the US or Europe. That is a meaningful reduction in friction for brands already scaling up HDR10+ and HDR10+ Advanced support across their 2026 lineups.

Tuyen Pham, chief executive officer of THX, said the Shenzhen lab "marks an important milestone and a natural extension to our commitment to advancing picture and sound quality standards and experiences for consumers worldwide."

Bill Mandel, co-manager of HDR10+ Technologies, said the facility means partners across Asia "will be able to have their latest HDR10+ and Eclipsa Audio devices evaluated at one location, in the most timely and cost-effective manner possible."

Matt Frost, director of product management at Google, called the Shenzhen facility the "rigorous validation necessary to bring this next-generation immersive audio technology to consumers worldwide."

The Shenzhen lab will conduct the full suite of HDR10+ certification protocols — distribution device compliance, display performance measurement, metadata processing validation, HDR10+ Advanced, and HDR10+ Gaming assessments — alongside Eclipsa Audio certification for televisions and sound devices.

Samsung and Google are building a parallel standards ecosystem — HDR10+ for video metadata, Eclipsa Audio for immersive sound — offering manufacturers and content creators a royalty-free path to premium AV features. With YouTube as a built-in distribution pipeline for Eclipsa Audio content, the potential reach is significant.

HDR10+ is already supported by every major TV manufacturer except LG, with HDR10+ Advanced closing the feature gap against Dolby Vision. If Eclipsa Audio follows a similar adoption curve, it could bring immersive audio to a broader range of devices and price points than the current Dolby Atmos licensing model allows.

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