Studio Support Could Steer More TV Makers to Back Dolby Vision, Says Report

TV manufacturers are offering high dynamic range in 4K TVs to boost market appeal, but many are struggling to decide between proprietary Dolby Vision and open HDR10 technologies as the route, said a Wednesday ABI Research report. HDR10 allows firmware updates and has the support of more manufacturers than does Dolby Vision, said ABI, which positions HDR in a format war between the two technologies. That could change in coming months as content creators HBO, Paramount, Sony Pictures Universal rally in support of Dolby Vision, it said. “The winner in the HDR10 and Dolby Vision competition is not yet clear,” said ABI analyst Khin Sandi Lynn, saying Dolby Vision currently supports higher light output levels than HDR10 and is better able to "adjust to different manufacturers’ displays.” Dolby Vision’s caveats are built-in hardware, more costly IP licensing and a certification process for licensing, Lynn said. A potential outcome, said Lynn, is that Dolby Vision will become the format for streaming movie and video-on-demand delivery, while HDR10 primarily supports live events and broadcast channels. Consumers viewing content from a service supporting Dolby Vision on a non-supported TV set “will likely not receive HDR signals,” Lynn said, but the TV will use color up-sampling “to simulate the HDR brightness and saturation.” Markets with less widespread broadband deployments such as India will require infrastructure upgrades to be able to support the bandwidth required for 4K video delivery, she said. That will help advance 4K TV adoption in the Asia-Pacific region where 4K penetration is currently 5 percent, Lynn said.