DOLBY VISION IS WINNING THE WAR AGAINST HDR10 +, WE NEED A SINGLE STANDARD
The time has come to unify HDR standards . It must be done for consumers, caught in the crossfire of the struggle between video standards, and it must be done to put an end to a war that does not exist , the one between Dolby Vision and HDR10 +. An invisible war for two reasons: the first is that the mass audience has never fully understood the importance of these technologies, the second because Dolby has never run the risk of losing .
Now, however, not even one of the most important founders of
the HDR10 + standard, as well as one of the main providers of compatible
content, namely 20th Century Studios, seems to believe it anymore. A clear
signal and that we hope will be taken in the right way by the TV producers,
because Dolby has won and continuing on the path of the double standard will
not lead to anything good.
The rough road to dynamic metadata
The development of HDR standards has been troubled. From the
beginning, HDR10 was seen as a technology limited by the use of static
metadata, which does not allows fine control of the video rendering, while
Dolby had seen it right with its Dolby Vision, immediately marrying dynamic
metadata (for understand what changes you can read our special dedicated to HDR
and Dolby Vision ). A good choice and one that was able to benefit from Dolby's
links with the world of cinema in terms of diffusion . The privileged channel
of the English company gave an important boost to the diffusion of this
standard, but not everyone agreed. The reason is simple: Dolby charges
royalties in order to use its HDR .
This obviously does not appeal to TV manufacturers, who are
forced to pay a license to use this standard. That's why HDR10 + was born in
2017 , a totally open source HDR format with dynamic metadata , sponsored by
Samsung (the world's largest television manufacturer), Panasonic, TCL and
Hisense, as well as from the world of telephony, with Qualcomm and ARM in the
lead.
To provide the content would have to think 20th Century Fox
, then passed into the hands of Disney and renamed 20th Century Studios, and
Warner Bros . Heavy names that should have created HDR10 + compatible TVs and
lots of content to watch. The problem is that compatible TVs have arrived in
large numbers, but few contents have been seen.
Is 20th Century Studios saying goodbye to HDR10 +?
Our direct experience, which is worth little in statistical
terms but is still representative of the current situation, is very simple: in
the last year we have not seen any content in HDR10 +, every time we have seen
a movie or a TV series with metadata dynamic we were faced with a content in
Dolby Vision. It was immediately clear that the road to HDR10 + was uphill,
Dolby enjoys a privileged position with content creators and this has led to a
massive adoption of this standard. We are not talking about Ultra HD Blu-Ray, which
has now become a niche with a modest weight on the outcome of this war between
standards, but about streaming services.. At first Amazon Video seemed to focus
a lot on HDR10 + but the new productions also arrive in Dolby Vision. Netflix
and Disney + instead chose Dolby Vision right away and these have an important
weight in defining the diffusion of the standard. Even if you look at the Ultra
HD Blu-Ray market, the vast majority of titles use Dolby Vision.
Despite this, the war between the two standards was
continuing, but the flatpanelshd portal discovered an interesting thing : all
the latest films released by 20th Century Studios are without HDR10+, HDR10 and
Dolby Vision only, based on physical media viewing or streaming. From Ad Astra
to Le Mans '66 - The big challenge, after the acquisition by Disney none of the
new films have supported HDR10 + anymore.
An important signal, which seems to indicate the abandonment
of the project by 20th Century Studios. The farewell is not yet official , this
must be clear, but the signs are not positive. At this point the situation
becomes difficult to understand, especially since Samsung, which sells more TVs
than all in the world, has never shown signs of opening to Dolby Vision , with
the result that excellent TVs arrive in homes but without the reference
standard. for the industry, at least for high quality content.
Panasonic has already equipped itself, the 2019 models in
fact support both HDR10 + and Dolby Vision, we hope at this point that Samsung
also decides to end this war between standards, because the only ones to lose
are the consumers..
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