I saw Dolby Vision 2 HDR in action on cheaper TVs, and it's a bigger upgrade than you think

(Image credit: Future)

At IFA 2025, Dolby gave me a demo of Dolby Vision 2, the next-gen version of the premium HDR format. I've already written about the broad features coming in Dolby Vision 2, but I got to dig deeper into them at this session – I'll write a full technical explainer later.

One of the initial questions I had about Dolby Vision 2 was what to expect from its promise that it would make a clear difference to image quality even on cheaper TVs. We know that it will come in two flavors – Dolby Vision 2 and Dolby Vision 2 Max – and that the higher-end version will have a load of extra features for even better picture quality adjustment.

That made me suspicious of what kind of a difference the regular version would really make, if Max had all the cool toys – but a side-by-side demo of regular Dolby Vision content compared to Dolby Vision 2 has me convinced.

The only problem is that because copyrighted footage was used for the demo, I wasn't allowed to take photos or video, which would make the differences obvious to you. But I can tell you what I saw.

The demos were on small Hisense A5 TVs, which are very much entry-level models. They're LCD TVs with full array backlighting and QLED, but that's the limit of their display tech.

On footage of a camel in the desert, covered in fabric, everything in the image had more pop – colors were a clear jump up in saturation, white tones were cleaner and elevated more, and shadows and dark areas looked deeper.

The improvement in perceived contrast even makes the image look more detailed, even though it was the same resolution on both TVs – contrast is a huge part of how our eyes resolve detail, so improving it makes things seem sharper.

This scene was the most dramatically improved demonstration, but footage of a landscape with cloud around the run revealed more nuanced detail in highlight areas too – the clouds had more more shades of light gray around the sun, instead of all being smooshed together at the top of the brightness capabilities of the TV.

Footage of someone applying deep black makeup under their eyes also revealed interesting changes in black tone handling. There was again more nuance, with more shades of black helping to bring the shape of the person's cheeks to life – but the black was clearly inkier, and even had more color nuance in the exact hue underlying the black make-up.

This was also another demonstration where the improvement in perceived contrast was clear, because reflections of light on the black make-up were much clearer, and make it look much more lifelike.

In landscape images, I would also say there was sometimes a perceived improvement in fullscreen brightness – the whole image looked lighter, not just highlights.

Having said all his, I did notice some scenes where the colors on Dolby Vision 1 looked a little punchier, or where Dolby Vision 1 felt a little more natural overall. But on balance, I'd say Dolby Vision 2 was a clear step up, and its improvements outweighed the areas where I preferred DV1.

What's changed?

Notice that I've used the word 'perceived' a lot above, because when I saw that things looked brighter, in many cases I believe there's no additional brightness being found from the Hisense TV's panel.

Tom Graham, Imaging Content Solutions Manager at Dolby Labs, explained that nothing has changed in the color or dynamic range spec of Dolby Vision for creators – it's still captured the same as before.

Dolby Vision 2's improvements come from being able to provide even more data to the TV about how the image is supposed to look, as defined by the creators when they encode to Dolby Vision. It's about taking the data that's already there Dolby Vision, and making better use of it.

One of the key features is called Precision Black, and this enables creators to add information about their bias light, and a slider for them to set where their first perceived step out of pure black and into near-black levels (where there will still be some detail) are.

I suspect this bias light data helps with the hue of black tones that I mentioned before, making them look more true to life. The slider for setting the step out of black is supposed to help avoid dark scenes looking to dark on TVs that don't have much dark-handling capability, to make sure detail isn't lost by these tones getting squashed together without enough separation.

But Dolby has also improved the engine that adapts the picture data to each TV. Tom Graham explained: "We have the colorist metadata and we have obviously the pixels, and we can do this next-generation analysis. We're actually breaking apart the image and reconstructing it in a way that a TV with less capability, with far less contrast and detail and color performance, can recreate and deliver. It's a dynamic situation, and it's rendering live on the TV based on this next-generation picture analysis that we're applying."

This demo showed a full Dolby Vision 2 setup versus Dolby Vision 1, meaning that both the video and TV were ready for DV2. If you had a Dolby Vision 1 video on a Dolby Vision 2, it seems that you should see some improvement (because the better smart picture analysis should apply to the existing Dolby Vision 1 HDR data), but you'd miss out on features such as the Precision Black control, because that info is only recognized by Dolby Vision 2 TVs, and would be ignored by Dolby Vision 1 TVs.

I was very impressed with the results – but don't expect this to come to your existing cheaper TV. It's looking unlikely that current TVs will be updated for Dolby Vision 2.

But for inexpensive TVs coming out in the future, if Dolby can get the big streaming services and creators on board for Dolby Vision 2, it looks like a genuine upgrade.

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Matt is TechRadar's Managing Editor for Entertainment, meaning he's in charge of persuading our team of writers and reviewers to watch the latest TV shows and movies on gorgeous TVs and listen to fantastic speakers and headphones. It's a tough task, as you can imagine. Matt has over a decade of experience in tech publishing, and previously ran the TV & audio coverage for our colleagues at T3.com, and before that he edited T3 magazine. During his career, he's also contributed to places as varied as Creative Bloq, PC Gamer, PetsRadar, MacLife, and Edge. TV and movie nerdism is his speciality, and he goes to the cinema three times a week. He's always happy to explain the virtues of Dolby Vision over a drink, but he might need to use props, like he's explaining the offside rule.

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