High Dynamic Range – Dolby Vision
Although LG have been supporting Dolby Vision on their OLED TVs since last year, it's only recently that the format has started to gain a degree of critical mass in terms of content. Netflix have been using Dolby Vision globally as a method of delivering HDR content for a while now and both Amazon and Vudu have also used the format for streaming HDR content in the US. However the arrival of the first Dolby Vision Ultra HD Blu-ray discs and players that support the format means that it has begun to gain greater attention amongst both enthusiasts and general consumers alike. Whilst in the past LG could be accused of box-ticking, that isn't the case now we have four Dolby Vision discs (
Despicable Me,
Despicable Me 2,
Power Rangers and
The Fate of the Furious) along with the
Oppo UDP-203 and UDP-205, both of which support Dolby Vision. LG's own 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray player, the UP970, will also be getting a Dolby Vision update.
So after running through the new Dolby Vision calibration workflow in CalMAN, we took the opportunity of watching some Dolby Vision content on the G7's large 65-inch screen, having previously watched Dolby Vision content on our 55-inch B7. The results were certainly impressive and although there isn't a night and day difference between HDR10 and Dolby Vision, the latter is the superior experience. At least it is on LG's OLED TVs but we still need to compare Dolby Vision to a higher-end LCD TV that can deliver HDR content with minimal or even no tone mapping. However based on our limited sample to date, we have been really impressed by Dolby Vision on LG's OLED TVs. The Dolby Vision version delivered saturated colours that were slightly more refined and specular highlights that never clipped and had slightly more impact, whilst darker scenes delivered deep blacks where necessary and also retained shadow detail, never appearing overly dim.
As we mentioned in the previous section on HDR10, one of the limitations of this format is that it has a single peak brightness number for the entire film. So regardless of whether the scene is bright or dark the target peak brightness remains 1000 or 4000 nits, depending on how it was graded. One of the big advantages of Dolby Vision is that it uses dynamic metadata that can change the peak brightness target from scene to scene and even on a frame by frame basis. As a result the Dolby Vision versions always looked correct from scene to scene, with no one scene appearing too bright or too dark compared to all the others, thus appearing more consistent throughout the entire film. This was especially true during the nighttime quarry scenes in
Power Rangersor the ice-bound submarine sequence in
The Fate of the Furious. In Dolby Vision both scenes delivered all their detail, never crushing or clipping, whilst also retaining a consistent experience compared to the scenes before and after. There's no doubt that Dolby Vision certainly shows potential and is able to deliver the full potential of OLED when it comes to HDR.