Dolby was happy to be talking about the adoption by LG of the Dolby Vision technology and in its closed booth, it was demonstrating a standard LG phone compared to a Dolby Vision playback and synchronised with an LG OLED TV. The demonstration was quite convincing and used some of Dolby’s standard test material which we have seen on very high brightness Dolby displays in the past. The Dolby Vision phone from LG (the G6) had much more saturated colour performance in the bright areas of the screen and matched very well with the image shown on the OLED TV. In fact, we initially assumed that the TV was an LCD version as the performance was close to the phone. However staff assured us that it was an OLED.
As well as the performance benefits, Dolby was making the claim that even with an LCD display, by using Dolby Vision to optimise the backlight brightness and turning it down where peak brightness is needed, on a frame by frame basis, could save as much as 15% of the power used. The company also claims that viewers rate content with a 10% lower bitrate as being of equal quality when Dolby Vision is enabled (compared to HDR10 content). That would be a good reason for operators to promote the playback of Dolby Vision content.
The company told us that EA has said that the Mass Effects game would support Dolby Vision. This is on PCs, but we’re not yet aware of any PC hardware companies that have said that they will support Dolby Vision. (We reported on the first HDR monitors from Asus and Acer, developed with Nvidia, at CES) (NVidia Looking at GPUs to Enable Deep Learning and Autonomous Vehicles – Shows HDR Monitor)
Analyst Comment
We asked Dolby what content it had used to test the claim that its technology could reduce power consumption. As far as I am aware, the standard video content used to measure power consumption is only available in SDR. Unfortunately, staff at the show didn’t know what test material had been used. (BR)
Dolby’s Vision Demo. The phone at the bottom left does not support Dolby Vision, but the one on the right does. The match between the phone and the TV was very good. Image:Meko
