How The PS4, Xbox One And Even The Apple TV Could Soon Get Dolby Vision HDR – Forbes

If you love home entertainment you’ll likely already know about Dolby Vision: the Dolby-licensed version of high dynamic range technology that seeks to enhance the HDR experience by providing TVs with scene by scene ‘instructions’ on how to make images look their best.

With most people who’ve seen Dolby Vision in action coming away impressed by its impact on picture quality, the technology’s only big issue up to now has been that it’s fairly hard to find. Not least because any AV equipment that’s wanted to offer Dolby Vision has had to integrate special Dolby Vision hardware, making it a relatively costly solution that has to be considered right from the start of a product’s design process.

Now, though, that’s all set to change. For Dolby has revealed that Dolby Vision is now available in a full software solution.

The PS4 Pro should be more than powerful enough to run the Dolby Vision software solution. (Pic: Sony PlayStation)

This means, in essence, that Dolby Vision could be added to almost any bit of AV kit – games consoles, set top boxes, TVs, Ultra HD Blu-ray players etc – that has enough processing power to handle the software implementation to Dolby’s satisfaction. As Dolby puts it:

“There are implementations that can run Dolby Vision in software, certainly in the console space but also in the TV SoC space. Specifics vary on a case-by-case basis depending on the hardware capability of the silicon in question, but we have development kits for various types of implementations, depending on the application: full hardware, hybrid of software and hardware or [and this is the crucial bit] full software.”

Flexible friend

I put a specific list of potentially upgradable devices to Dolby that included games consoles, TVs, the Nvidia Shield, Android TV set top boxes and Apple TV, and Dolby confirmed that its software implementation could indeed be applied to such devices.

Two examples of Dolby Vision via firmware update have already been announced, in fact. Sony revealed at the CES in January that its fantastic (and, crucially, ultra powerful) Z9D televisions will be getting Dolby Vision via firmware later this year, while Oppo’s also outstanding UDP-203 Ultra HD Blu-ray player is set to get a Dolby Vision update in the next month or so.