The launch of the Apple TV 4K has introduced countless households around the world to the Dolby Vision high dynamic range (HDR) picture format. For the most part this has been good news; after all, as I’ve reported before, the extra layer of scene by scene picture information Dolby Vision provides demonstrably improves picture quality.
Unfortunately, though, Apple’s marriage with Dolby Vision hasn’t been all plain sailing. As discussed here, many Dolby Vision TV owners - especially those with LG OLED TVs - have noticed that sometimes Dolby Vision feeds from the Apple TV 4K can suffer with elevated black levels. In other words, dark scenes can suddenly look grey in a way that doesn’t happen when watching the same content in the industry standard HDR10 format. Or when watching Dolby Vision using an app (such as Netflix) that’s built into the TV.
I raised this issue with Dolby, Apple and LG Electronics a while back, and I’m pleased to say that not only has the cause of the problem been found, but a fix for it has already been created.
The brand which has ultimately held its hands up to the problem is… Dolby. During a meeting with them at the CES today, they admitted that the problem was of their making, and had to do with the way Dolby Vision was implemented over HDMI from external devices such as the Apple TV 4K.
This explains, too, why I and other 4K Blu-ray fans have also sometimes seen the same sort of raised black level issues when watching Dolby Vision 4K Blu-ray titles.
Dolby didn’t go into detail about exactly what the issue was, but the great news is that the solution they’ve put together - which has to be applied to displays, not Dolby Vision source devices - has already been made available to the TV manufacturers who need it.
The fact that it needs to be rolled out in firmware updates by the TV makers means that Dolby can’t put an exact date on when the fix will hit every make of Dolby Vision-capable TV. It will depend on each TV brand’s firmware update schedule. I should also stress that I haven’t seen a ‘fixed’ Dolby Vision TV myself, so can’t vouch for the extent and effectiveness of the software update.
Dolby seemed extremely confident, though, that it has solved the issue, so I guess all we can do now is wait impatiently for our TV manufacturers to start rolling the update out.
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