When Dolby Labs introduced Dolby Vision 2 in September 2025, I didn’t actually get it.
The unique Dolby Vision was simple to grasp: If your TV and streaming content material supported it, you’d get a brighter image with extra coloration element, notably in shadows and highlights. I bear in mind being blown away by the technology when it first debuted at CES 2014, particularly in comparison with the 4K shows and curved panels that TV makers have been hyping up on the time.
The enhancements Dolby Vision 2 guarantees aren’t as simple. While Dolby’s preliminary press release makes use of every kind of jargon to explain the brand new format (with phrases like “Content Intelligence” and “Authentic Motion”), the tangible advantages are more durable to parse.
Fortunately, CES 2026 offered a possibility to see Dolby Vision 2 up shut, evaluate it with the unique Dolby Vision, and get some questions answered. While Dolby Vision 2’s advantages are a bit murkier, they at the very least handle some annoyances with streaming video as we speak.
Dolby Vision 2 offers with HDR’s darkness points
HDR (excessive dynamic vary) is a characteristic in lots of fashionable TVs that enables for higher variations between the darkest and brightest components of a picture, with extra coloration element in between. With HDR, for instance, a scene depicting an explosion will exude extra vivid reds and oranges, as a substitute of blown-out whites, whereas HDR in a shadowy scene shall be rendered with evocative blue and inexperienced hues, as a substitute of simply depicting a muddy grey.
At least that’s the way it’s alleged to work. But with each HDR format—the unique Dolby Vision together with HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG (Hybrid Log Gamma)—a standard grievance is that darkish scenes can look too darkish. Dolby’s answer is to collect extra knowledge about how the content material was made—as an illustration, the creator’s selection of reference monitor, or how a lot ambient mild was within the color-grading room—and regulate brightness on playback accordingly. The concept is to compensate for the distinction between what creators see of their costly modifying suites and what viewers see on their TVs at residence.
Jared Newman / Foundry
“We know exactly what shadows were meant to be seen, and not,” stated Dolby’s director of enterprise technique, Jonas Klittmark.
Dolby Vision 2 goals to make HDR look higher on cheaper TVs
While the unique Dolby Vision sometimes required a mid-range or higher TV, Dolby is optimizing this new model for cheaper units via a brand new tone-mapping engine. This combines extra metadata from creators with native tone mapping, which makes extra granular changes to the colours of every pixel. Local tone mapping is the method of analyzing the wide selection of coloration of brightness in an HDR picture, after which compressing that knowledge right into a type that the TV you’re watching can truly ship.
In a demo at CES, the outcome was a noticeable distinction on what Dolby claimed was a $250 TV that didn’t have any native dimming zones. Next to a comparable set working the unique Dolby Vision, the brand new model produced extra vivid colours.
Jared Newman / Foundry
“The new engine is just much more capable of holding onto the goodness of the original HDR source, even on a display that’s quite limited in its capabilities, like this,” Klittmark stated.
That similar tone-mapping engine additionally provides Dolby Vision 2 a neat new trick: It’ll let customers management the depth of the HDR impact via a slider of their TV settings. Users may need to improve the impact in a window-lit room with a lot of reflections, as an illustration, or dial it again if the image appears too eye-searingly shiny.
Dolby Vision 2 permits for smoother movement (with out overdoing it)
One of essentially the most intriguing Dolby Vision 2 options has nothing to do with HDR in any respect. Instead, it’s a characteristic known as “Authentic Motion,” which makes for a much less jerky image in scenes with quick movement (the trade refers to this visible jerkiness as “judder”).
Unlike the much-maligned movement smoothing results on most good TVs, which will be so easy that it appears such as you’re watching a cleaning soap opera, Dolby’s characteristic applies only a small quantity of body interpolation in sure scenes, based mostly on metadata delivered by content material suppliers. In a CES demo, Dolby confirmed a film scene during which the digicam swept throughout the room with out the same old judder, however in a manner that also felt cinematic.
“In Dolby Vision 2, we’re dynamically through metadata setting the de-judder just enough to take the edge off of the judder, so that it doesn’t bother you anymore,” Klittmark stated.
Dolby Vision 2 Max
Alongside the usual Dolby Vision 2, there may even be a fancier model known as Dolby Vision 2 Max.
While each variations can have principally the identical options, Dolby Vision 2 Max will additional regulate the image based mostly on a TV’s ambient mild sensors; for instance, it can assist to keep away from scenes that look overly darkish. This is successfully an evolution of Dolby Vision IQ, an extension of Dolby Vision that’s out there in lots of as we speak’s mid-range to high-end TVs.
More importantly, Dolby believes Max will function an general indicator of TV high quality, in the identical manner it believes Dolby Vision as soon as did.
When Dolby Vision first arrived within the mid-2010s, many TVs promised HDR compatibility, however weren’t shiny or colourful sufficient to make HDR video look good. Dolby Vision assist grew to become a helpful proxy for understanding in case you’d get a good HDR image. Now that Dolby Vision 2 is heading to lower-end TVs, Dolby hopes the “Max” label will assist delineate TVs with superior image high quality.
“Dolby Vision 2 Max is for premium TVs, and it will basically replace Dolby Vision in the market,” Chris Turkstra, Dolby’s vice chairman of residence gadgets, stated. “Dolby Vision 2, which you can think of as a standard version of Dolby Vision, that will attach to new TVs that don’t have Dolby Vision today.”
It’ll be some time earlier than Dolby Vision 2 issues
While it’s value being conscious of Dolby Vision 2 as extra TV makers and streaming companies get on board, it’s nonetheless early days for the format.
So far, solely three TV makers have dedicated to supporting Dolby Vision 2: Hisense will supply it in its top-shelf RGB MiniLED TVs for 2026, TCL can have it in its high-end X11L SQD Mini LEDs and mainstream C collection units, and Panasonic will convey it to a number of new OLED TVs. In different phrases, the promise of Dolby Vision 2 in low-end TVs isn’t materializing anytime quickly.
Meanwhile, three different main TV producers–LG, Samsung, and Sony–haven’t introduced their Dolby Vision 2 intentions. Samsung, for one, doesn’t assist any model of Dolby Vision as we speak–almost certainly as a result of it doesn’t need to pay royalties to Dolby.
On the content material aspect, Peacock is the one streaming service on board with Dolby Vision 2, which it will support along with the original Dolby Vision for live sports. Given that content material makers should additionally assist Dolby Vision 2 within the modifying course of, it could be some time earlier than extra streamers resolve to throw their weight behind it.
Dolby Vision 2 in all probability gained’t be an element for anybody pondering of shopping for a brand new TV in 2026. But because the format turns into extra widespread within the years to come back, it’s one thing you’ll need to take into consideration, particularly if, like me, you lastly perceive it.
Sign up for Jared’s Cord Cutter Weekly newsletter for extra streaming TV recommendation.