Dolby presents "Dolby Vision 2" - what's behind it

Luca Fontana

6.9.2025

Translation: machine translated

HDR is getting smarter: Dolby is launching a new generation of its picture technology with "Dolby Vision 2". Hisense and CANAL+ are the first partners - but what does this actually mean for viewers?

It sounded a bit like an attempt to reinvent HDR at the IFA in Berlin: Dolby presented «Dolby Vision 2». The new version should not only make films, series, sports and games brighter and more colourful, but also smarter. Hisense with its new RGB MiniLED TVs and the French media group CANAL+ are the first partners to bring the upgrade directly into the living room.

But what exactly is behind this new edition?

What makes Dolby Vision 2 technically new

Dolby Vision 2 comes with a range of new tools that sound like buzzword bingo at first glance. Dolby calls the toolbox itself «Content Intelligence». This is a kind of AI control centre that analyses the image and environment in real time. The aim: to automatically optimise the picture so that it looks better, regardless of whether you're sitting in a darkened home cinema or watching in a bright living room on a Sunday afternoon.

Precision Black

A common criticism of HDR has been that scenes appear too dark and details in shadows are lost. This is exactly where Precision Black comes in. Filmmakers can now store much more precise information in the metadata. For example, the lighting conditions under which a scene was mastered on the reference monitor. This allows the television to later reproduce the image in such a way that it comes as close as possible to the master, regardless of the model.

Dolby is convinced: scenes such as the infamous «Long Night» from «Game of Thrones», where viewers could barely recognise anything in the dark, should be a thing of the past.

Light Sense

Dolby Vision IQ already enabled televisions to measure the ambient light and adjust the picture accordingly. According to Dolby, Light Sense goes one step further: reference data from the film or game is now also included. This should make the adjustment more precise and natural, regardless of whether you are watching during the day or in a darkened room.

Sports and gaming

Sports and gaming are all about the white point. While film modes are usually calibrated to D65 - i.e. have a warm, reddish tone as intended by the film makers - sports broadcasts can be cooler and crisper. In future, Dolby Vision 2 will automatically adapt the white point to the content: warm and accurate for films, cooler, crisper and brighter for football or games.

In addition, there will be improved motion control. This should ensure that live sports and games look smoother and that the ball or character does not disappear in streaks or overly bright areas of the screen. Anyone who plays «Mario Kart World» on the Switch 2 knows what I mean.

New tools for creatives too

With so-called «bidirectional tone mapping», filmmakers should have more control over how their content looks on extremely bright or colour-intensive TVs. Until now, this decision was almost exclusively the responsibility of the TV's image processing. Now, directors or studios can specify more precisely how brightness and colours are translated.

The big demo surprise, however, was «Authentic Motion». Until now, viewers only had the choice of either putting up with «Judder» - i.e. small jerks during fast camera pans - or activating their TV's intermediate image calculation and ending up with the infamous «soap opera effect», in which the image «appears too fluid» and unnatural.

With Dolby Vision 2, film-makers should now have control themselves - scene by scene, frame by frame. They can carefully increase or decrease the intermediate image calculation as if using a fine control. The aim is to preserve the typical cinema look for most of the film, but to intervene in critical moments with fast movements to prevent distracting judder.

In the live demo, Dolby showed the same scene three times: once without interlaced image calculation, once with aggressive interlaced image calculation and once with Dolby Vision 2. The result: cinematic, authentic and yet free of judder in the tricky areas. Very nice.

Slightly less nice is that Dolby is releasing two levels of its new technology:

• Dolby Vision 2 Max: all the features for high-end TVs
• Dolby Vision 2: slimmed-down version for the mid-range

This means that not every TV with Dolby Vision 2 will automatically be able to do everything, there are differences depending on the model. «Authentic Motion», for example, would then be omitted.

Dolby explained that this is not just marketing, but has to do with the necessary hardware: «Max» needs high-end chips and displays with enormous brightness and colour gamut. A reduced version is therefore available on mid-range devices. This is still better than no Dolby Vision 2 at all, but for buyers it is unfortunately another term in the already dense technology jungle.

Why now?

Dolby Vision was launched in 2015, when LCD televisions were still 32 to 40 inches on average and reached perhaps 300 nits. Today, ten years later, we are faced with 115-inch monsters with up to 8000 nits of brightness. Dolby argues: The devices have evolved so much that it was high time for an update.

Another reason for the long pause: Dolby Vision is not a simple file format, but an entire ecosystem. For Dolby Vision 2 to work, the technology must be deeply integrated into the chips of televisions, streaming boxes and smartphones. Encoders and decoders on the production and device side must work together. This is why it takes longer for a new version to be ready for the market - and explains why Hisense is currently the only manufacturer that already has the necessary hardware with its MediaTek processor.

Dolby wants to secure its lead in the HDR race. Competing formats such as HDR10+ (primarily driven by Samsung) or classic HDR10 have long been established. With Dolby Vision 2, Dolby is not focusing on «even more brightness», but on intelligent adjustments.

And now?

It remains to be seen exactly when the first devices will be released. Dolby promised at IFA that Hollywood, device manufacturers and streaming services will start as soon as their hardware is ready. However, this could still take a year or two. One thing is certain: Hisense wants to equip its upcoming high-end TVs with Dolby Vision 2, and CANAL+ is already planning to contribute the appropriate film, series and sports content.

Reassuring for all those who have just bought a new TV: Dolby confirmed that Dolby Vision 2 content will also run on old TVs with Dolby Vision 1. The new metadata will then simply be ignored and the old Dolby Vision will be played instead.

It remains unclear, however, whether Dolby Vision 2 will also be available on UHD Blu-rays or projectors. Dolby also did not want to provide any information on certification costs. For example, whether manufacturers will have to pay more for the Max version than for the standard version.

Luca Fontana

Senior Editor

Luca.Fontana@digitecgalaxus.ch

I'm an outdoorsy guy and enjoy sports that push me to the limit – now that’s what I call comfort zone! But I'm also about curling up in an armchair with books about ugly intrigue and sinister kingkillers. Being an avid cinema-goer, I’ve been known to rave about film scores for hours on end. I’ve always wanted to say: «I am Groot.» more

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