Dolby Vision is the premium HDR format. It does everything hdr10 does — wider colours, deeper blacks, brighter highlights — but adds dynamic, scene-by-scene metadata that tells the TV exactly how to map brightness for every shot, not just the whole movie. It also supports up to 12-bit colour (vs 10-bit in HDR10), eliminating banding even on the most demanding gradients.
In the streaming market, Dolby Vision is the de-facto premium HDR badge. Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, Max and almost every other major service ship their tentpole content in it. Hardware-wise, it's supported across all Apple devices, most premium TVs (LG, Sony, TCL, Hisense, Vizio), gaming consoles (Xbox Series X/S), and most streaming sticks. The notable holdout for years has been Samsung, which backs the rival hdr10-plus format instead.
The catch: Dolby Vision is licensed. Device makers, encoder vendors and streaming platforms pay Dolby per device or per stream. That's why HDR10 still exists as the universal fallback — every Dolby Vision title is also encoded in HDR10 so non-licensed devices can still play it. For a streaming product, the practical choice in 2026 is "ship HDR10 baseline always, ship Dolby Vision on top when you can afford the licence and when your content quality justifies the premium badge".
The book · Volume 1 of 7
Video Encoding: A Complete Guide to Video Compression — From Pixels and Color to H.264, HEVC, AV1, Quality Metrics, and AI
Dolby Vision carries per-scene HDR metadata and up to 12-bit signal, and getting profiles and fallbacks wrong means flat pictures on half your devices. Volume 1 covers Dolby Vision in detail: HDR10, HDR10+, Dolby Vision and HLG compared, dynamic metadata, colour spaces, and encoding HDR with HEVC and AV1. Written by Nikolay Sapunov, CEO at Fora Soft.
Adding Dolby Vision to your catalogue without breaking HDR10 and SDR playback?
Share your mastering and device targets: we plan the Dolby Vision profiles, HDR10 fallback and encode ladder for your catalogue and list the devices each output reaches. 250+ video products shipped since 2005.
