Dolby Vision HDR support is finally coming to Disney’s future 4K Blu-ray releases, as reported by Forbes – and the first two releases to include this are both summer blockbusters.
Disney has announced this Deadpool and Wolverinescheduled for release on October 22, and Alien Romulus, set for release on December 3, both will support Dolby Vision HDR, marking the first Disney releases (apart from some James Cameron titles) since Star Wars: The Last Jedi, which was released in 2018 to support Dolby Vision.
Dolby Vision is a popular HDR format that is increasingly supported by the best TVs available – even budget models like the Amazon Fire TV Omni QLED support it. Dolby Vision improves picture quality on Dolby Vision-compatible displays by improving color, contrast and brightness, creating a wider dynamic picture and better handling of highlights and darks in difficult scenes, depending on what your TV is capable of. state.
Disney initially only used the standard HDR10 format on its Blu-rays, and it’s not entirely clear why it has now decided to support Dolby Vision (since it already supports it on the Disney Plus streaming platform) – although it’s possible that Sony’s Disney’s acquisition of physical media production may have something to do with it, as Sony itself is a big user of Dolby Vision in its TVs, including the Sony Bravia 9, and some of the best 4K Blu-ray players.
Whatever the reason, it’s great news for home theater fans.
More 4K Blu-ray good news
It’s no secret that the state of 4K Blu-ray and physical media has looked bleak in recent years, with Disney all but signaling a shift away from it when it announced last year that it would no longer be selling 4K Blu-ray in Australia. . It came down to the efforts of publishers like Arrow Video, Criterion Collection, and more to keep 4K Blu-ray from becoming extinct.
However, earlier this year, two major stores in the US announced they would be stocking discs, and in Britain, HMV, a major AV retailer, announced that sales of physical media were on the rise.
With the arrival of Dolby Vision on Disney’s 4K Blu-rays, this will hopefully mean even more investment in the field that not so long ago seemed to be in its ‘dying days’. Starting with a major Marvel release in Deadpool and Wolverine could raise awareness of the benefits of Dolby Vision in home media, and in turn lead to a further resurgence in the physical media sector – with streaming sites such as Netflix, Prime Video or Disney Plus and Hulu, both of which have recently made further price announcements announced increases, that making streaming platforms more expensive is not a good idea.