Dolby Vision 2

What Dolby Vision 2 is

Dolby Vision 2 is the next generation of Dolby's dynamic HDR format. Dolby unveiled it on 2 September 2025 as an evolution of Dolby Vision, and its product page lists three components: Content Intelligence, an Image Engine, and Authentic Motion. Dolby describes Content Intelligence as automatically recognizing different kinds of entertainment and viewing conditions, and the Image Engine as optimizing brightness, contrast and color scene by scene. The pitch is that the TV, not the viewer, does the picture-mode tuning.

The release defines two tiers. Dolby Vision 2 targets mainstream TVs and brings the new image engine and Content Intelligence. Dolby Vision 2 Max targets the highest-performing TVs and adds further features that use their full capabilities. Dolby announced the MediaTek Pentonic 800 with its MiraVision Pro PQ engine as the first silicon chip to integrate Dolby Vision 2.

How Dolby Vision 2 works

Content Intelligence bundles four tools. Precision Black targets images that look too dark, improving clarity without changing the creator's intent. Light Sense uses ambient light detection plus reference lighting data from the content source. Sports and Gaming Optimization adds white-point adjustment and motion control for live sports and games. Bi-directional tone mapping gives creators controls to take advantage of brighter, more colorful TVs, and DisplayDaily summarizes the goal as letting high-end displays use full peak brightness and color volume while staying close to the grade. Dolby Vision can represent up to 10,000 nits and requires mastering displays of at least 1,000 nits, while HDR content is commonly mastered at 1,000 to 4,000 nits. A TV that peaks near 2,000 nits still has to compress a grade mastered at 4,000 nits by half at the top end, and that mapping is what these tools steer.

Authentic Motion is the headline addition. Dolby calls it "the world's first creative driven motion control tool," applied shot by shot to reduce judder without a heavy smoothing look. On the 6 August 2026 Hisense release, Dolby places Authentic Motion in the Max tier and says it reduces judder and soap-opera effects "in newly authored titles." Because the motion intent is metadata written by the colorist, existing Dolby Vision titles do not gain it. For the mechanics of what is being corrected, see 24p judder and motion interpolation.

A simple scale shows why the tone mapper matters. SDR represents roughly 100 nits, HDR formats address 1,000 to 10,000 nits, and PQ (SMPTE ST 2084) can encode up to 10,000 cd/m². A grade mastered at 4,000 nits shown on a TV that peaks at 1,000 nits needs 4 to 1 compression at the top, while a set that peaks at 2,000 nits needs 2 to 1. The better the display knows what the creator wanted at each scene, the less it has to guess.

Dolby Vision 2 vs Dolby Vision

The base layer and the dynamic-metadata idea are the same: per-scene or per-frame data steers the TV's tone mapper, where HDR10 carries one static curve. What changes is the amount of processing on the display side. Both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ list 10,000 nits as their peak, so the new features change processing rather than the ceiling. The Aug 2026 release says the new image engine "enhances both new and existing Dolby Vision titles," so standard Dolby Vision 2 TVs improve legacy content with an intensity slider for depth and richness. Light Sense 2 and Pro settings are Max-only. Hardware matters: DisplayDaily quotes Dolby that most existing Dolby Vision TVs will not receive Dolby Vision 2 through firmware alone, and Engadget reports that TVs wanting the full feature set need an ambient light sensor.

Which TVs and services support it

On 6 August 2026 Dolby and Hisense announced Dolby Vision 2 live on select Hisense TVs. The Max tier covers the UX, UR9, UR8 and U7 (U7 pro in EU, MEA and CSA). Standard Dolby Vision 2 covers Hisense 2026 models running Google TV or VIDAA OS, with more firmware updates promised within weeks across North America, Europe and APAC. At CES 2026 DisplayDaily reported TCL's X QD-Mini LED series and 2026 C-series arriving through over-the-air updates, and TP Vision's Philips OLED811, OLED911 and OLED951 as OLED reference implementations. The Dolby and trade releases I read name Hisense, TCL and TP Vision; they do not name LG, Samsung or Sony, so I list no support for those brands.

Content is thinner. Peacock was the first streaming service to pledge Dolby Vision 2 content, and Dolby's August 2026 release lists CANAL+, iQIYI and Peacock as committed, without dates or feature lists. Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+, Amazon Prime Video, HBO Max and Paramount+ carry the original Dolby Vision, per Engadget. The competing HDR10+ Advanced already lists thousands of Prime Video titles. The timeline is about eleven months from announcement (2 September 2025, per Dolby's release) to the first shipping firmware on 6 August 2026, with CES 2026 demos in between.

Common confusions

Dolby Vision 2 is not a new HDR base layer or a new HDMI version, and it is a separate feature set from Dolby Vision IQ. A "Dolby Vision 2" logo does not guarantee Authentic Motion, since that sits in the Max tier. Players and disc profiles such as Profile 8.1 describe how the original format is carried, and I found no published profile list for Dolby Vision 2. The first practical gain on a new TV is therefore the image engine working on existing Dolby Vision titles, not a library of Dolby Vision 2 masters. The longer explainer is Dolby Vision 2 explained.