- No Dolby Vision on Disney+ in the EU (again)
- UK and US viewers are not affected
- This is due to patent issues and other streamers have settled out of court
Back in February, we reported that Disney+ had dropped Dolby Vision HDR from its service in parts of Europe; Disney said at the time that this was due to “technical challenges”, but later admitted that “as a result of a lawsuit at a German patent court, we were forced to make changes to the availability of certain advanced video formats” when the format returned to the platform.
And now it seems that Disney+ has had to drop Dolby Vision again, in 11 countries this time.
The culprit again appears to be litigation, this time in the Unified Patent Court (UPC). And the plaintiff is again InterDigital, which claimed Disney is infringing one of its video patents. Because the UPC has a broader jurisdiction than the German court, it affects Disney+ in several countries.
InterDigital published a press release about the latest ruling earlier this week. The court “ruled that InterDigital is entitled to an injunction against Disney’s infringement of an InterDigital patent covering certain video coding techniques related to HEVC, and affirmed the validity of that patent,” InterDigital says.
“The UPC is a pan-European patent court that issues decisions that apply across multiple countries in the European Union (EU); here, the ban against Disney spans 11 EU countries. Disney can appeal the decision.”
The affected countries are all in the EU, so the UK isn’t affected, and obviously the US isn’t either: if you go to the support page for Disney+ in the UK, it will happily sing the praises of Dolby Vision content. However, it has been removed from the support pages in Europe.
Why Disney doesn’t do Dolby in Europe
The court ruling is not the only challenge facing Disney. InterDigital has sued over other patents covering HDR technology, “dynamic overlay of multiple video streams” and compression technologies associated with HEVC and AVC codecs.
Although the ruling was about Dolby Vision, it also affects 3D movies on Disney+ that are available on Vision Pro because they all use Dolby Vision as well.
Disney isn’t the only company that InterDigital says is infringing on its patents, but other companies, such as Amazon, have apparently settled to continue offering Dolby Vision.
Disney isn’t blaming technical challenges this time. In a statement to FlatpanelsHD, Disney Nordic said:
“As a result of legal proceedings at a European patent court, we have been required to make changes to the availability of Dolby Vision and 3D in Denmark and several neighboring countries. We are disappointed that we have had to do this and we share our customers’ frustration. Disney+ continues to support the highest quality formats, including up to 4K UHD and HDR, and we ensure that we actively provide the best opportunities to explore the latest changes so that we can actively see the new opportunities. tailored to customers’ devices and subscriptions.”
Are you considering buying a new TV?
Try our TV size and model finder! You tell it how far you sit from your TV, we’ll tell you what size to buy based on viewing angle advice from picture quality experts, and we’ll recommend our top three TVs in that size at different prices.
Follow TechRadar on Google News and add us as a preferred source to get our expert news, reviews and opinions in your feeds.
