DO I NEED DOLBY VISION AND HDR10+?
Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are both socalled ‘active’ formats of high dynamic range technology. This means that they both carry extra scene by scene picture information that compatible TVs can use to deliver more accurate representations of the image content. Dolby Vision also features advanced colour mastering and optimises its images for the specific TV they’re being fed into. All sounds great, but does your TV really need them? Throwing this question into sharp relief is the fact that most TVs either don’t support either format, or else only support one or the other. For instance, Samsung doesn’t support Dolby Vision, while LG doesn’t support HDR10+. Experience suggests that HDR10+ and, especially, Dolby Vision certainly improve HDR performance. Though by how much varies. They tend to deliver their most obvious advantages on cheaper TVs, which don’t have such clever built-in HDR processing. TVs with high quality processing and bright, contrast-rich screens usually don’t need the extra HDR ‘help’ as much. Frustratingly, some content – such as the 4K Blu-ray of Alien – is out there available in HDR10+ only, while other content (such as Joker on 4K Blu-ray) is only available in Dolby Vision. So while Dolby Vision and HDR10+ may really be more desirable than essential on premium TVs, we still look forward to a time when every brand has joined Panasonic and Philips in providing support for both active HDR formats on their TVs.
Also, it’s worth nothing that if you play a film or stream that supports HDR10+ or Dolby Vision on a TV that doesn’t, the signal will fall back to a default HDR10 signal. So you still get an HDR experience, but without the benefit of the extra scene by scene image data.