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Elektrofone

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 5, 2010
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So I’m wondering if movies labeled as Dolby Vision on the iTunes Store will play in HDR on my TV that only supports HDR10?
 
The one I have tried (The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) plays on mine. So I would assume it will also play on yours. There may be differences though, as EDID of your display tells aTV its capabilities.
 
Yes, Dolby Vision encoded content will display HDR on a TV with HDR10. Of course, you would need a TV that supports DV to see the improved picture quality DV provides.
 
Yes, Dolby Vision encoded content will display HDR on a TV with HDR10. Of course, you would need a TV that supports DV to see the improved picture quality DV provides.

I figured as much. But as long as I’m getting the benefits of HDR10 I’m happy until I can afford a DV set
 
From my understanding, the vast majority of HDR-enabled movies have both HDR10 *AND* Dolby Vision. So you should be fine. But *SOME* movies have only Dolby Vision, so if you happen to have one of those movies, it would play in non-HDR on an HDR10-only display. Unfortunately, I don't know how to tell if a movie has both - all of my 4K movies show only the DV logo.
 
I figured as much. But as long as I’m getting the benefits of HDR10 I’m happy until I can afford a DV set

Yes, you'll get HDR10. And though Dolby Vision is better, a lot of very good TVs support only HDR10 so that's certainly nothing to worry about.
 
Iffy right now. iTunes/AppleTV doesn't make clear when a movie has both HDR10 & DV, it seems they list only one. So based on their own admission that some movies may only support one or another (they do say "some" have both) its impossible to tell if that movie you are buying/renting that says "Dolby Vision" even has an HDR10 encode, and if it doesn't you get NO HDR AT ALL. Sucks.
 
Hello,

Nobody knows a trick to determine if DV (Dolby Vision) iTunes movies are also available in HDR10 ?

Thanks.
 
Yes, you'll get HDR10. And though Dolby Vision is better, a lot of very good TVs support only HDR10 so that's certainly nothing to worry about.

Iffy right now. iTunes/AppleTV doesn't make clear when a movie has both HDR10 & DV, it seems they list only one. So based on their own admission that some movies may only support one or another (they do say "some" have both) its impossible to tell if that movie you are buying/renting that says "Dolby Vision" even has an HDR10 encode, and if it doesn't you get NO HDR AT ALL. Sucks.

Where does Apple publish this info? So far I've seen nothing official describing how DV works versus HDR10. I've read that all physical DV disks must have HDR10 as a fallback, but as far as digital streaming, downloadable content it seems to be the Wild West. VUDU for instance makes it clear on their website, they only support DV, and not HDR10. I can only imagine Dolby is entering into exclusive deals in order to market DV. But if Apple isn't offering a way to distinguish between them, it's a problem. I couldn't care less about 4K, it's the HDR that I'm interested in, and since the majority of 4K TVs don't support DV, only offering that option would blow a lot of holes in Apple's claims.
 
No, you will not always get both. Per apple sometimes there is HDR10 and DV, sometimes it's just DV and sometimes it's neither.
 
Where does Apple publish this info? So far I've seen nothing official describing how DV works versus HDR10. I've read that all physical DV disks must have HDR10 as a fallback, but as far as digital streaming, downloadable content it seems to be the Wild West. VUDU for instance makes it clear on their website, they only support DV, and not HDR10. I can only imagine Dolby is entering into exclusive deals in order to market DV. But if Apple isn't offering a way to distinguish between them, it's a problem. I couldn't care less about 4K, it's the HDR that I'm interested in, and since the majority of 4K TVs don't support DV, only offering that option would blow a lot of holes in Apple's claims.

Apple on their website specifically states some may have none, some HDR10, some may have DV, some may have both. It's concerning to me because I haven't seen any movies that show BOTH tags, just either HDR (which is HDR10) or DV. Now perhaps it shows DV but it also had HDR10, it just shows the "better" one instead of listing both side by side? Who knows, you would have to test if HDR is working I guess with a DV marked movie but with a HDR10 only tv?

The whole issue is so concerning to me I limited my choices in new tvs this fall to those that have DV because I'm concerned that Apple may only offer the DV master of a movie and not the HDR10 and I'd be left with no HDR.
 
Apple on their website specifically states some may have none, some HDR10, some may have DV, some may have both. It's concerning to me because I haven't seen any movies that show BOTH tags, just either HDR (which is HDR10) or DV. Now perhaps it shows DV but it also had HDR10, it just shows the "better" one instead of listing both side by side? Who knows, you would have to test if HDR is working I guess with a DV marked movie but with a HDR10 only tv?

The whole issue is so concerning to me I limited my choices in new tvs this fall to those that have DV because I'm concerned that Apple may only offer the DV master of a movie and not the HDR10 and I'd be left with no HDR.

I see, thanks for clarifying.

VUDU only offers DV, seems to be a marketing thing. It's unthinkable that Apple doesn't distinguish these details. There was some question as to whether my Sony 900E would get DV when the other Sony sets were upgraded to get it. While we're all still waiting, the consensus is that my set won't get it. I wasn't really worried because of the Blu-ray Disc directives, but since that doesn't seem to apply to streaming, it looks like I may be screwed.

I feel like Dolby must be spending big money to get Apple to market their movies this way. Apple could easily have the HDR stream available to fall back to when no DV is available, and could insist on it really, as the studios are delivering it already for BD mastering.
 
There was some question as to whether my Sony 900E would get DV when the other Sony sets were upgraded to get it. While we're all still waiting, the consensus is that my set won't get it. I wasn't really worried because of the Blu-ray Disc directives, but since that doesn't seem to apply to streaming, it looks like I may be screwed.
I am also waiting for the promised firmware update that would enable DV on my Bravia. But now, in the light of recent developments, I am not really holding my breath.
Every businessman would ask - why pay royalties to Dolby, if you can get same (or equivalent) functionality in a license-free way? HDR10+ is supposed to have dynamic metadata as well and it only remains to be seen if it will take the place of DV, just because the cost and openness advantage.
 
Apple on their website specifically states some may have none, some HDR10, some may have DV, some may have both. It's concerning to me because I haven't seen any movies that show BOTH tags, just either HDR (which is HDR10) or DV. Now perhaps it shows DV but it also had HDR10, it just shows the "better" one instead of listing both side by side? Who knows, you would have to test if HDR is working I guess with a DV marked movie but with a HDR10 only tv?

The whole issue is so concerning to me I limited my choices in new tvs this fall to those that have DV because I'm concerned that Apple may only offer the DV master of a movie and not the HDR10 and I'd be left with no HDR.

Can you link the scource of this statement, please?
 
I have been testing 3 of the devices with 3 different displays (2 that are HDR10 compatible, and 1 that is Dolby Vision compatible) since launch day. I have purchased several UHD/HDR titles, and all of them play back on both types of displays with no problems whatsoever regardless of whether they are available "only" in DV or not. All of the titles I've purchased are also in my UHD Blu-Ray collection and, aside from the expected slight decrease in sharpness (due to the lower bitrates inherent in streaming), the presentations were almost identical in picture quality. Some of the streams did display compression artifacts in the darker regions of some images, but for the most part I was quite impressed with the hardware performance of the ATVs as well as Apple's implementation of Dolby Vision Profile 5.

I think the iTunes movie service compares favorably with the offerings from FandangoNow and Vudu, and should easily surpass both services once the lack of support for object oriented audio is addressed.
 
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I like to consider myself technically well versed, but there is a lot of conjecture and miss-information mixed in with HDR conversations, that make finding a real answers difficult.

We all know that an encoded video is not simply passed through to your TV. From my understanding, the Apple TV can decode both HDR10 and DV to its internal wide gamut frame buffers(this is required for it to be able to display overlays on a video). My question is how does this frame then get to the TV? My assumption is that the Apple TV must be capable of generating the HDR layers on the fly, otherwise it would be unable to display real-time content like overlays or games in HDR (I am not entirely sure that it can play games in HDR).

Now, it is entirely possible that the Apple TV is internally an SDR device that just passes through HDR metadata if available. But this seems counter to the device’s design and tendency to stay in HDR mode all the time. It would also mean that overlays could never be correctly tone mapped since the video’s HDR layer would be unlikely to match the overlays mapping.

So assuming that the Apple TV does have an “HDR” frame buffer and can dynamically generate appropriate HDR10 or DV layers, wouldn’t it make sense for DV content to be automatically internally mapped to HDR10 even no HDR10 layer was present in the original video? (Of course a dynamic DV layer would still be superior to an HDR10 layer)

With all of this in mind I can’t think of a reason why DV content won’t be played in HDR10 unless there is a legal requirement to prevent this. It actually seems like NOT “converting” DV to HDR10 would take more effort.
 
All, in light of other information I've read here and elsewhere, I must back off my prior statements that an Apple-encoded DV movie would still play with HDR on a TV that supports HDR 10 but not DV. While it ideally would work this way as HDR 10 doesn't require Apple to pay royalties, my prior posts in this thread seem to suggest that it automatically does, and this is incorrect. I hate when people spread misinformation in forums (well-intentioned or not), but I'm apparently not immune to this myself. Apologies.
 
Check out the other thread on this issue. It has been confirmed that DV only videos are in fact “converted” to HDR10.
 
I’m watching Stranger Things 2 and in the Netflix app it only lists it as UltraHD 4K but everywhere online lists it as HDR so I can’t tell if it’s actually playing in HDR or not. My set is only capable of HDR10
 
I’m watching Stranger Things 2 and in the Netflix app it only lists it as UltraHD 4K but everywhere online lists it as HDR so I can’t tell if it’s actually playing in HDR or not. My set is only capable of HDR10
Your set should be able to tell what mode it is in, SDR or HDR. Also quite easily noticeable on white elements of OSD, at least on mine.
 
Your set should be able to tell what mode it is in, SDR or HDR. Also quite easily noticeable on white elements of OSD, at least on mine.

Well the problem is that the AppleTV, when I’m HDR mode, constantly sends an HDR signal so you can’t tell if it’s ACTUALLY in HDR or not. Also sometimes it’s hard to tell if it’s in HDR or just looks that way because the backlight is on full blast.
 
In that case, you are watching in HDR.
If you want to know whether incoming stream is in HDR, the only way is to look at the HUD.
 
Dolby has tools to extract the base HDR10 data from DV mastered content. Its not a completely simple process though.

DV and HDR10 use a different color space so if the content provider does this they will need to manually do all the color work themselves.

This is what Netflix does for some of their HDR10 content, even some of their Ultra 4K content.

There is an obvious problem with this though. The contents color accuracy will only be as good as the streaming service provided it. Realistically a professional wont have a problem with this but it is a place for error.
 
DV and HDR10 use a different color space so if the content provider does this they will need to manually do all the color work themselves.
Do you have any reference to prove this?
AFAIK, all HDR standards have agreed on BT.2020. If I check the colour space on a HDR10 and a DV movie, I see BT.2020 reported on both.
RE extractIng HDR10 base layer from DV movie, I followed the hint someone posted on Aerials screensaver thread and simply changed the fourCC on a DV encoded aerial clip to hvc1 and they all play now in HDR10 mode on my Bravia (no DV support). So was rather trivial.
 
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