Your 4K Blu-Ray Player Will Need A Big Update Before Using This New Dolby Feature

It's been relatively quiet in the world of 4K UHD Blu-ray players for a few years. Brands like Samsung and LG have doubled down on TV tech, pushing ancillary AV components to the side. That really just leaves Sony and Panasonic for the North American market, and the former isn't so interested in modernizing its Blu-ray hardware. Dolby recently announced that Dolby Vision 2 (DV2), a brand-new HDR format, can be added to existing 4K players via a software update.

Unfortunately, Sony has already gone on record to say that the company won't be supporting the DV2 update. Panasonic didn't respond to the publication's query on the matter, and it might be a minute before the company does so. The DV2 update is no small enhancement either; Dolby expanded the HDR metadata available to content creators, allowing for even more precision around brightness, colors/contrast, and motion clarity.

If you're a movie buff, DV2 is a picture advancement you probably don't want to miss out on. The physical media crowd is less than thrilled with the speculation, though. Sony hasn't exactly been the bearer of happy news over the last several weeks, and some users at r/4kbluray are concerned that the manufacturer may lock DV2 support to brand-new 4K Blu-ray players. (Please don't do that, Sony.)

As is often the case in the world of consumer tech, the rollout of Dolby Vision 2 is a classic example of putting the cart before the horse, or software before hardware in this case. Even if the DV2 update were to roll out to existing Sony and Panasonic players, your TV or projector will need to support the format, too. 

Two versions of DV2 are also slated to hit the market: a base tier and an advanced option called Dolby Vision 2 Max. The latter will only be available on select premium TVs and will support advanced DV2 features like Authentic Motion and improved tone-mapping. As for TVs, the DV2 rollout kicked off a few weeks ago on select Hisense TVs, and our pals at RTINGS expect both TCL and Philips to hop on the DV2 bandwagon, too. Fortunately, DV2 is fully backward-compatible with traditional Dolby Vision content, making the game of compatibility catch-up a little easier on us consumers. 

We'll also be interested to see how the continuing DV2 rollout meshes with the current state of most consumer hardware. Artificial intelligence is causing a RAM crisis left and right, so even if Sony, Panasonic, or another AV brand released a 4K Blu-ray player with DV2 support, we could be paying some pretty high prices for a picture format that isn't natively supported by most TVs on the market. What a strange time to buy a movie-watching machine.