Dolby Vision on your new television: good choice or poor addition?

We have already written a few times about Dolby Vision. But actually we never talked about what it actually means and whether it is wise to get a specific television that supports the standard.

With this article we want to change that. We are happy to explain what Dolby Vision is and how it differs from, for example, HDR10.

Dolby Vision and HDR10

If you are talking about Dolby Vision, then you should also be talking about HDR10. These are the two most important HDR formats. HDR again stands for High Dynamic Range. You can read what that weather is here. The basic difference is that HDR10 is an open standard and can be used freely in televisions, screens and beamers. With Dolby’s technology, the customer has to pay a license, which not everyone is waiting for.

Still, it is useful when purchasing a new television to see whether it supports Dolby Vision. This technique allows you to display 12-bit color depth. That ultimately yields 68.7 billion colors. HDR10 is in that respect ‘limited’ to 10-bit with 1.07 billion colors. Unfortunately, there are currently no televisions that support 12-bit. It is therefore something that you mainly see in the cinema. The technology of Dolby is thus scaled back on television, so that you actually only see a small difference.

Dynamic HDR

Another difference is that Dolby Vision uses dynamic HDR. HDR10 does that statically. That means that when you watch a movie, HDR10 metadata remains the same. Vision can make changes. As a result, colors and brightness are adjusted dynamically. This is due to an algorithm, which scans each frame and displays it in its best way. This makes content come to life.

gaming

Dolby Vision is something that is currently mainly used with movies. Yet we also see that it is being used slowly but surely in gaming. For example, the Xbox Series X supports the technology. So if you have that game console and want to buy a television, it would be a good idea to see if it supports that.