- Dolby Vision HDR is back for Disney+ viewers in Europe
- The feature was removed due to a legal dispute
- Patent litigation is an ongoing problem for streamers
Disney+ has brought Dolby Vision HDR back to European viewers, a month after the feature was removed for many subscribers to the Disney+ app and on Apple’s Vision Pro 3D movies, which also use Dolby Vision.
Disney initially said the removal was due to “technical challenges,” which many people assumed meant “we’re in the middle of a patent dispute” because Disney+ was in the middle of a patent dispute. And now Disney+ has confirmed in a statement that yes, the removal was due to a patent dispute.
Speaking to FlatpanelsHD, Disney+ said: “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 in Germany and other markets.” But now Dolby Vision and 3D Vision Pro movies are back.
The article continues below
If you are one of the affected subscribers, updating the app should fix it.
Where there’s a streaming hit, there’s a convention
There are many lawsuits surrounding video streaming: to take just one example, Nokia has filed suit against Amazon, Hisense, Warner Bros. Discovery and Paramount over video codecs and streaming technology. Disney, Amazon, and Netflix have all been subject to video patent-related lawsuits, as have all manner of electronics manufacturers.
In this particular lawsuit, the plaintiff was InterDigital, which has nearly 12,000 patents for video technology alone, and like many such companies, it filed cases in multiple locations: Brazil, California, and in multiple jurisdictions in Germany.
The reason for the lawsuits is that video technologies have many parents. They are typically built on top of previous technologies, many of which will be patented by the organizations they came from. This means that a video format like HEVC contains hundreds of patents held by all kinds of companies, including Sony, Samsung, Mitsubishi, Microsoft, Panasonic, Toshiba, JVCKenwood and many others.
In technology, patent holders often work together in what is known as a patent pool. It’s not a new idea – the first patent pool was for sewing machines in the 1800s – but it’s become an important one in sectors like streaming, where there are tons of patents related to the technology.
Companies that want to use technology like HEVC can pay for a license to use the patent pool, which gives them the right to use all the technology covered by the pool’s patents. You can the very long list of HEVC licensees here.
Patent owners are very keen to ensure they are paid by anyone using technology they hold the patents for, and these licenses don’t come cheap: for example, Access Advance’s patent pool for HEVC, VVC, AV1 and VP9 codecs costs from $1.167 million per month to $5.25 million per month, depending on the size of the streamer and its highest fair audience (if its largest organization is fair).
Reports suggest that some patent owners are demanding even more: sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars a year.
When you see the amounts of money involved, it’s not surprising that patent owners are so eager to take streamers to court. The Disney+ case in Germany wasn’t the first such suit, and it certainly won’t be the last. But at least the app is back to normal, and the three affected Vision Pro owners should be pretty happy too.
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. Be sure to click the Follow button!
And of course you can also follow TechRadar on YouTube and TikTok for news, reviews, video unboxings, and get regular updates from us on WhatsApp also.
