Following Dolby Laboratories' announcement of Dolby Vision 2 HDR technology (see our IFA 25 news > HDR Dolby Vision 2, new Tone Mapping and better image quality?), an evolution of Dolby Vision HDR to further enhance the quality of images displayed in light of the ever-increasing performance of premium broadcasters, we first went to the Dolby press conference, then to a technical demonstration to find out more about this new process.
It's not easy to talk about a new technology and demonstrate it when everything is theoretical today. Indeed, except in Dolby laboratories, no available broadcaster is currently certified HDR Dolby Vision 2 and no HDR Dolby Vision 2 content is available. With the impossibility of "decoding" a Dolby Vision 2 HDR master, the proposed demonstrations therefore consisted of pre-rendered content. HDR Dolby Vision 2 and HDR Dolby Vision 2, what are the differences?££££ Before going any further, it is necessary to identify the differences between the HDR Dolby Vision 2 and HDR Dolby Vision 2 Max processes (see photo below). As you can see, the Max version is significantly more sophisticated. To summarize, HDR Dolby Vision 2 more or less replaces the current HDR Dolby Vision and HDR Dolby Vision 2 Max is intended to take advantage of the capabilities of current TVs, which are much more efficient than those of the mid-2010s, when HDR Dolby Vision appeared.
Why HDR Dolby Vision 2?££££ Next, it is a question of explaining why Dolby laboratories offer HDR Dolby Vision 2 today. Quite simply because HDR Dolby Vision is no longer useful, or almost, with a very wide selection of televisions on the market. Indeed, with the current TV capabilities, premium models as well as mid-range models, it is generally no longer necessary to carry out optimized Tone Mapping, an essential component of HDR Dolby Vision. To understand this, we must go back to the origin of HDR Dolby Vision: contrary to what many consumers think, the HDR Dolby Vision offered by the eponymous laboratories was intended for the least efficient broadcasters. The aim was to frame the rendering of the content displayed on the screen to avoid, among other things, that the colors (due to deficient Tone Mapping) or the grayscale (due to a weak light peak) go haywire. At the time, LG preempted communication on the HDR Dolby Vision functionality by integrating it into its premium [abc]Oled[/abc] TVs, imposing it in the minds of consumers as a quality label, almost the opposite of its original nature. Ten years later, the quality of televisions has greatly improved, even that of entry-level models, making its algorithms almost useless. Many TVs do just as well via a Dynamic Tone Mapping mode, for example. Hence the proposal of HDR Dolby Vision 2…
HDR Dolby Vision 2, an approach opposed to that of HDR Dolby Vision££££ This time, Dolby laboratories are approaching the subject completely differently. While Dolby Vision HDR was initially intended for the least capable broadcasters, Dolby Vision 2 HDR is primarily aimed at the most capable broadcasters with the HDR Dolby Vision 2 Max label. Please note, apart from content that requires Dolby Vision 2 HDR remastering to establish a specific metadata overlay, on the hardware side, Dolby Vision 2 HDR certification only concerns televisions at the time of writing, even if Dolby Laboratories are discussing extending it to other products in the future: video projectors, game consoles, etc.
HDR Dolby Vision 2: new Sports Optimization and Authentic Motion features££££ While a new Sports mode based on the D72 standard is present on both HDR DV2 labels for a more "vibrant" screen rendering (less cinematic therefore), associated with the Sports Optimization function (manageable on screen via a bar graph to adjust its intensity according to your wishes: adjustment of the plane point, movement control, etc.), the difference between HDR DV2 and HDR DV2 Max therefore lies essentially in the management of movements. In addition to the presence of a more efficient, HDR DV2 requires a chip within the television validated by Dolby laboratories (only the Pentonic 800 is validated at the time of writing these lines), allowing the management of more powerful display algorithms: even wider dynamic range and particularly Authentic Motion. The latter modestly aims to satisfy both lovers of a fluid display (therefore of the motion compensation irremediably linked to the creation of more or less well managed artifacts), and those of strict respect for the original frequency of the contents, even if it means losing immersion (especially on large screens), due to poor readability in panoramic movements.
Authentic Motion mode therefore allows content creators to manage judder in scenes that require it, without losing the cinematic aspect of the work (like the TruCut Motion proposal from Pixelworks). Namely, the laboratories assured us that they do not use an image interpolation process, without really giving any further details. So, it's worth digging deeper, because the result on the screen, between a sequence with Authentic Motion mode versus the same sequence without, is truly obvious.
HDR Dolby Vision 2, what result depending on the content and the TV££££ As already mentioned above, the potential of HDR Dolby Vision 2, even more so that of Max, will be truly exploitable with content mastered/remastered in HDR DV2 and an HDR DV2/DV2 Max broadcaster capable of accessing the DV2 metadata layer. What about other cases? • In the presence of DV2 content and a non-DV TV, the rendering will be HDR10, in the presence of a DV TV, the rendering will be classically DV • In the presence of DV content and a DV2 TV, the rendering will be improved but marginally according to the Dolby representative • For [abc]streaming[/abc] platforms, the DV2 metadata layer will be encapsulated in the HDR10/DV stream of the content and accessible to the appropriate TVs. No need for a specific DV2 stream to be stored on the platforms' servers
