HDR10 and Dolby Vision explained

It’s not the first time we’ve grumbled about the war on formats going on in the home entertainment world. It’ll be no surprise that we can announce a new one: two types of high dynamic range (HDR) video technologies – HDR10 and Dolby Vision.  We’ll dive into the differences between the two in a minute but, before we do, we should review what HDR is and how it ended up with two different formats.

What is HDR?

Chances are HDR is not a new concept to you. We’ve talked about HDR before and many other website has dedicated blogs and newsletters on it. But to briefly recap: HDR means better, richer pixels. While 4K promises more pixels on the screen, HDR is promising better, richer pixels. HDR TVs are capable of displaying details in the darkest and brightest areas of a picture that are lost using old standards such as Rec.709.

If you consider that the human eye is capable of recognising so much more than what was displayed with the old Rec. 709 standard, you will understand that HDR content allows for colours that are much closer to how we see them in real life. A big improvement that is to be welcomed, for sure!

It will come as no surprise that ‘contrast’ and ‘colour’ are the two main things to keep in mind when thinking about HDR.

HDR10 vs Dolby Vision explained

Now what is the deal with HDR10 and Dolby Vision formats?

Dolby Vision was created as an end-to-end solution. That means it is used to master film, package it and then replicate it on your TV exactly as it was intended and thus offering better quality.

HDR 10, by contrast, was created by television manufacturers as a means of avoiding being under control of Dolby (and its licence fees). The result is an open-ended solution which doesn’t map content specifically for that TV, which ultimately leads to a less precise reproduction of the video.

What’s interesting here is that if you decide to buy a Dolby Vision TV, you’ll still be able to watch HDR10 content. But, that said, the reverse isn’t the case – if you buy a HDR10 TV, there’s a very good chance you’ll never be able to watch Dolby Vision content on there.

But let’s not get ahead of ourselves and just quantify that statement of ‘better quality’ for Dolby Vision.

It all comes down to the specs that the two formats support.

HDR10 supports up to 4,000 nits peak brightness, with a current 1,000 nit peak brightness target, 10-bit colour depth and capable of displaying everything in the Rec.2020 colour space.

Dolby Vision, on the other hand, supports up to 10,000 nits peak brightness, with a current 4,000 nit peak brightness target, 12-bit colour depth and capable of displaying everything in the Rec.2020 colour space.

Sounds like a lot of alien language to you?

Let’s put this in perspective: Dolby Vision with 12-bit colour allows for a total of 68 billion possible colours. By comparison, HDR 10 tops out at 10-bit meaning it can only manage one billion colours.

While that sounds like a big difference between the two, it’s good to realise that non-HDR televisions top out at a meagre 16 million colours. Which leads us to the conclusion that either of the HDR formats will offer a big improvement, no matter what.

At this stage, televisions aren’t actually capable of displaying the fancy 10,000 nits of brightness that is offered by Dolby Vision. Dolby argues that Dolby Vision has been created to continue to support television advances, so this standard is more future-proofed.

Maybe the most important difference between the two formats has got to do with dynamic metadata that is added to the basic HDR information.

We should think of the metadata that makes up HDR as coming in one or two layers: With HDR10 content, your HDR TV receives ‘static metadata’ which is relatively basic ‘global’ information on the content that applies to the film or TV show as a whole.

This basic layer can’t give instructions on how each specific shot or scene should be shown and is referred to as the HDR signal.

Dolby Vision is built on the same basic layer consisting of general information but an additional layer of ‘dynamic data’ sits on top of it. It carries scene by scene instructions, making each scene as accurate as possible and exactly the way it was originally. This extra layer is referred to as standard dynamic range or SDR signal.

The above difference between HDR10 and Dolby Vision explains our previous statement that a Dolby Vision Television is capable of HDR10 but not vice versa. After all, Dolby Vision carries the HDR as well as the SDR signal, while HDR10 only the HDR signal.

Other formats aside from HDR10 and Dolby Vision

It would be a mistake to assume that it is just HDR10 and Dolby Vision involved in the game that is HDR. There are a few additional players who tackle things from a slightly different angle:

One is HLG, or Hybrid-Log Gamma, a partnership between the BBC and NHK broadcasting networks to serve as an HDR format especially designed for live video.

The second one, Advanced HDR, is the least established of the four major formats, and it’s designed to be work across different HDR hardware. Despite it being the newest kid on the block, there is a fair chance that TV manufacturers will support it because of its cross compatibility.

What products have HDR10 or Dolby Vision?

While Dolby Vision might be the more capable of the two technologies, , it’s HDR10 that has been the biggest winner up till now and chances are the Televisions you bought last year isn’t Dolby Vision capable.

However, the tide seems to be changing: LG has Dolby Vision support in all of its 2017 OLED TVs (some of their 2016 models already did last year). Sony has announced that Dolby Vision will be supported on its high-end 2017 TVs.

On the other hand Samsung and Panasonic are the biggest hardware brands that don’t (yet) support Dolby Vision on any of their products.

Up till now, Dolby Vision hardware in televisions and Ultra HD blu-ray players required a built-in chip. However, it is now possible to add Dolby Vision support via a firmware update to devices with sufficiently powerful processors. This will potentially avoid a lot of disappointed customers who spent a lot of money on high end displays that now end up being unable to support the better quality Dolby Vision.

As for home theatre projectors: Dolby Vision, at the moment is irrelevant. There are no models currently supporting it or on the near horizon.

The Oppo UDP-203 Ultra HD Blu-ray player is expected to get Dolby Vision support via a firmware update next month.

What about content?

But a Dolby Vision Ultra HD player is nothing without content.

We can be fairly brief: there are currently no Dolby Vision Ultra HD Blu-ray discs on the market. However, Lionsgate, Sony, Universal and Warners have all promised Dolby Vision UHD Blu-ray releases for 2017 – no specific titles have yet been announced.

Things are more advanced on the streaming side. In the UK, both Netflix and Amazon support Dolby Vision HDR streams, while in the US they are joined by VUDU.

So which one should you support?

The answer to this question depends on what kind of TV watcher you are. If you want the best-of-the-best content and don’t mind a limited pool of content at the moment, you should probably bite the golden bullet and buy a Dolby Vision TV. But, if you don’t think you’ll be able to see the difference in picture quality or you’d rather stick to the standard while Dolby fleshes its system out a bit more, you should probably opt for an HDR10 setup. As for the future, with Dolby Vision’s potential for content creators to have more say over how their content appears, our money is on Dolby Vision as the ultimate winner. But then again, it wouldn’t be the first time a giant gets outplayed by the underdog.

Source: Techradar, What Hifi, Dolbylab, Trusted review, Home theatre reviews, Projector Central