Do you wonder why the colors look so good when watching new movies on a 4K TV or Android phone? Aside from the type of display, a high dynamic range (HDR) is also responsible for how colors and brightness appear. This lets you view an extensive range of colors and shades not possible on a standard non-HDR screen. Dolby Vision is a form of HDR with a few new exciting features that make it worth looking into. This guide goes over what Dolby Vision is and how it compares to standard HDR.
Before discussing Dolby Vision, we need to mention what high dynamic range is and how it makes displays better. A display with a standard dynamic range (SDR) can output only a limited set of colors. However, a high dynamic range (HDR) display can surpass that limitation. HDR offers a higher range of colors, peak brightness, and contrast ratio than typical TVs or monitors that have older SDR displays.
You will come across two standard formats of the HDR technology: HDR10 and HDR10+. HDR10 is the original format that introduced HDR to many displays for the first time, while HDR10+ builds on that foundation.
Dolby Vision is a type of HDR display technology created by Dolby Laboratories to enhance the colors of an HDR-capable display. Like HDR10 and HDR10+, Dolby Vision is another HDR format you will see on more TVs and monitors.
Dolby Vision is similar to HDR10 and HDR10+ in that they are HDR formats. However, Dolby Vision offers unique features not found in the previous two HDR formats. At the same time, there are some downsides to Dolby Vision. The section below lists the main points about how Dolby Vision compares to HDR10 and HDR10+.
Dolby Vision has a strong future as a genuine alternative to the HDR10 and HDR10+ formats. The dynamic metadata allows content creators to define the color settings of a scene or frame with a 12-bit color depth. This is useful for filmmakers and professional videographers who want to portray their work in the most detail possible. It also allows them to share their vision of how the picture or color settings should look when viewing their content. As Dolby Vision displays continue to hit the market, more content creators will support the newer HDR format.
