Unless you’re a Hollywood colorist, video metadata isn’t a very fun topic of conversation to bring up at a party — and yet, metadata is what’s going to transform your next budget TV purchase into a screen that punches well above its sticker price. At least, that’s the pitch of the Dolby Vision 2 demo I got at CES 2026.
I was certainly a bit skeptical when it was first announced at IFA 2025. It wasn’t clear to me why we’d need a new name for the technology that has, for the better part of 10 years, delivered higher-level HDR performance. And I really wasn’t sure why we needed both a Dolby Vision 2 and a Dolby Vision 2 Max.
Turns out, Dolby Vision 2 isn’t just about making the best TVs look better (although Dolby Vision 2 Max can do that). Instead it’s about making budget models look much, much better than their paltry price tags might suggest. Here’s how it works.
What does Dolby Vision 2 do, exactly?
Dolby Vision 2 is one of the two names for the upcoming upgrade to the older Dolby Vision HDR standard: There’s Dolby Vision 2 and Dolby Vision 2 Max. (Yeah, I’m still not thrilled there’s two names for it.) Its biggest rival is HDR 10+ Advanced, and you could read all about the differences between them in our Dolby Vision 2 vs HDR10+ Advanced guide.
Dolby Vision 2 applies that same level of tweaking to a wider range of TVs, like cheaper budget models that have typically had a hard time applying the original format effectively.
Dolby Vision originally promised to deliver better HDR by giving colorists — the people who color grade and correct shows and movies — the power to change the upper and lower limits of brightness on a frame-by-frame basis. Dolby Vision 2 applies that same level of tweaking to a wider range of TVs, like cheaper budget models that have typically had a hard time applying the original format effectively.
It does this by taking the metadata provided by filmmakers and TV show producers and turning that into a set of instructions for your TV.
For example, one of the features that Dolby calls “Precision Black” takes into account your TV’s peak brightness output and lowest black point to deliver better visibility in dark areas.
Another one called “Light Sense” uses a TV’s ambient light sensor to detect how bright your viewing space is and adjust the color saturation accordingly. (If you oversaturate or undersaturate an image, you’re not only getting a worse viewing experience, but it’s different from the one the creators intended for you to see.)
Dolby Vision 2 isn’t just doing this once every minute or even every second — but every single frame if that’s what the creator wants it to do.
So how can it make TVs look better?
That’s the question I couldn’t answer before CES. A TV is limited by certain factors — its backlighting system, for example, and its built-in processor. And that’s still true.
Dolby Vision 2 isn’t adding anything that wasn’t there before — it’s just doing a better job of adapting the metadata to a TV that wasn’t super well-equipped to handle it.
But what Dolby Vision 2 can do is take those limitations into consideration and churn out more meaningful settings changes. Dolby has labs all over the world that test TVs from all of its partners and compiles a database of their specs; it can then use these specs to make informed decisions about how to best portray incoming metadata.
I saw this firsthand on two nearly identical TVs sitting side-by-side, one with regular Dolby Vision and one with Dolby Vision 2. The colors looked more saturated and dark details were more visible on the TV running Dolby Vision 2. According to Dolby, Vision 2 isn’t adding anything that wasn’t there before — it’s just doing a better job of adapting the metadata to a TV that wasn’t super well-equipped to handle it.
Dolby Vision 2 Max can even do this with motion processing: On the backend, Dolby Vision 2 Max now allows content creators to dial in how much motion smoothing they want at any given moment in a show or movie.
Quickly panning the Fields of Pelennor in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King might require a lot of motion processing to prevent judder from occurring. The next minute, you might not want any motion processing at all when King Théoden gives his inspirational speech to the Rohirrim. Dolby Vision 2 Max will allow for both.
There’s just two major problems here…
The good news is that, right out of the gate, all Dolby Vision 2 TVs will be backwards-compatible with regular Dolby Vision content. If you have one of your favorite films in Dolby Vision on 4K Blu-ray, that won’t suddenly stop working when Dolby Vision 2 becomes available.
The bad news is that Dolby Vision 2 does require specific chipsets to work properly. At launch that’s limited to the MediaTek Pentonic 800 SoC. Dolby is working with MediaTek and other manufacturers to bring it to a wider variety of TVs, but for now, that’s the only chip with a portion dedicated to processing Dolby Vision’s algorithm.
If a TV maker doesn’t decide to use the Pentonic 800 as the brains behind its next budget TV, then you can’t get all of those cool features I just mentioned.
The translation here is that, if a TV maker doesn’t decide to use the Pentonic 800 as the brains behind its next budget TV, then you can’t get all of those cool features I just mentioned. You’ll be stuck with regular Dolby Vision.
Another issue is that Dolby Vision 2 Max can’t magically conjure up new metadata for motion smoothing. Although it wasn’t explicitly said, the implication was that creators are going to have to go in and add that metadata themselves — a process that Dolby says is easy but still a hassle for any editor who’s already gone through and spent time adding metadata to their creations.
These are issues that content creators will have to iron out — and until they're integrated into a creator’s workflow, the Dolby Vision 2 content well will remain dry.
Dolby Vision 2: Outlook
In the end, Dolby can't make Vision 2 happen by itself. It needs creators, TV manufacturers, streaming services and even chip makers to all be on-board with the program.
But it's something Dolby has done in the past when it rolled out the original outline for Dolby Vision a decade ago. Slowly but surely more and more creatives and manufacturers came into the fold and, before long, there was plenty of content.
Why is any of that important for you as a regular ol' TV buyer? Well, the sooner we see widespread adoption, the sooner TV manufacturers will have the incentive to put Dolby Vision 2 into every model in its lineup. And that's a big win for everybody.
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