Why do Studios deny Dolby Vision on 4K BD but use it on Digital 4K?

[bendermac]

A ton of movies on the iTunes Movies are with Dolby Vision, but their physical counterparts only get the HDR10 treatment. Personally I find this very annoying. 4K Blu-rays are premium, so studios should give us the full premium treatment, right?

[Agent Kay]

Yep they are premium, I want HDR10+ on every disc

[Dubstar]

Originally Posted by Agent Kay

Yep they are premium, I want HDR10+ on every disc

[ZHobbs]

Studios can tweak digital files, that was Disney's reasoning.

[ROSS.T.G.]

I’m fine with HDR10 and DV if handled properly. Lions Gate had some wonky issues with raised blacks but the last few titles like Lord of War looked gorgeous in DV.

[amory87]

The conspiracy theorist in me says it's because they want digital to be seen as the best experience and get as many people to move over to it as possible. The discs still make them money so it's worth putting them out, but not worth putting in max effort.

[Dubstar]

^ but then you have instances where the 4K is exclusive in streaming form only

War of the Worlds (1953)
The Omen (1976)
Goodbye Christopher Robin
Princess Bride
The Silence of the Lambs
It's a Wonderful Life

... and others

[amory87]

Originally Posted by Dubstar

^ but then you have instances where the 4K is exclusive in streaming form only

War of the Worlds (1953)
The Omen (1976)
Goodbye Christopher Robin
Princess Bride
The Silence of the Lambs
It's a Wonderful Life

... and others

Well sure, but I think that's to my point as well. Digital 4k is the default, disc is the exception when the studio sees a point in bothering with it.

I think anyone still looking at the disc like it should always be the 'premium' format for collectors are missing that discs nowadays are more of an annoyance for studios, with a lower margin and less control over the content.

[Vangeli]

Offering up Dolby Vision on streaming is easy, getting Dolby Vision onto disc without issue is difficult.

[Agent Kay]

Originally Posted by Dubstar

Fine, I will leave.
But I am taking all the nits with me.

[bradnoyes]

Yeah, hopefully someone who knows their stuff can properly explain it, but my understanding is that it's pretty easy to just slap the DV tone mapping system on a stream, but getting the metadata properly mastered on a disc requires significantly more work. That's pretty much just the Friendly Neighborhood Dumbass explanation, but I know there are some folks around who can fill in the gaps.

[MisterXDTV]

Because UHD BD Mandatory format is called HDR10

DV is optional and complicated to implement on disc with the double video stream

[nick4Knight]

I think they made it so complicated to attempt to obfuscate the playing of DV by pirates out there? Which is just the dumbest reason ever. Just get with the times and assume all your titles will end up in the hands of those who want it. And focus the efforts on delivering a flawless product to those who are paying. Don't punish them...

It really kills paying consumers on two fronts. Worse implementation for compatibility of the standard, and those who purchase but still favour remuxing are stuck in an awkward spot.

[KubrickKurasawa]

Never cared one bit for dolby vision, dolby atmos, or dolby digital. Gimmicks to sell average labeled hardware for a high premium with imho.

[Doctorossi]

Originally Posted by KubrickKurasawa

Never cared one bit for dolby vision, dolby atmos, or dolby digital. Gimmicks to sell average labeled hardware for a high premium with imho.

Cool story, bro.

[s_har]

Originally Posted by KubrickKurasawa

Never cared one bit for dolby vision, dolby atmos, or dolby digital. Gimmicks to sell average labeled hardware for a high premium with imho.

What about DTS?

[Dubstar]

Originally Posted by Doctorossi

Cool story, bro.

*giggles*

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by nick4Knight

I think they made it so complicated to attempt to obfuscate the playing of DV by pirates out there? Which is just the dumbest reason ever. Just get with the times and assume all your titles will end up in the hands of those who want it. And focus the efforts on delivering a flawless product to those who are paying. Don't punish them...

It really kills paying consumers on two fronts. Worse implementation for compatibility of the standard, and those who purchase but still favour remuxing are stuck in an awkward spot.

Ehhhhh.....not really. DV is in this position because the BDA specified that if a disc is using HDR then the inclusion of an HDR10 layer is mandatory. No ifs, no buts. There were two optional formats included at the start: Dolby Vision and Philips a.k.a. Technicolor, with a third added later in the form of HDR10+. All the latter two are doing is adding a layer of extra metadata to the HDR10 which can be used at the decoding end to better map the signal to the TV.

But with Dolby Vision it's not just about the dynamic metadata on top of HDR10, it's built around this whole 12-bit ecosystem and with UHD's HEVC transport streams specified as 10-bit only then something had to give, so Dolby devised a way to extract and compress the 12-bit 'difference data' from the master into a separate 10-bit video stream to go along with the 10-bit HDR10 base layer. Both are combined in the display device (or player, in the case of low latency implementation) to recreate the 12-bit original. This adds to the authoring complexity, not making it impossible but making it more involved and more time-consuming than just 'set and forget'.

In case people didn't know, there aren't any 'native' 12-bit profiles for delivery of Dolby Vision to home consumers AT ALL, at the moment it's all based around squeezing the image into 10-bit (or even 8-bit!) transport streams and then rebuilding it at the other end. AFAIK the internet streaming versions don't carry any enhancement layers whatsoever, they just contain the dynamic metadata with a 10-bit stream and are upsampled to 12-bit upon decoding so this is where DV on disc can be the higher quality option, should it contain a full enhancement layer. I say that because it's not required to do so, several examples of DV on disc are just metadata-only and contain no difference data.

[infiniteCR]

Which causes that annoying 50ms lipsynch issue I have to manually adjust stuff around.

[Nothing371]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Ehhhhh.....not really. DV is in this position because the BDA specified that if a disc is using HDR then the inclusion of an HDR10 layer is mandatory. No ifs, no buts. There were two optional formats included at the start: Dolby Vision and Philips a.k.a. Technicolor, with a third added later in the form of HDR10+. All the latter two are doing is adding a layer of extra metadata to the HDR10 which can be used at the decoding end to better map the signal to the TV.

But with Dolby Vision it's not just about the dynamic metadata on top of HDR10, it's built around this whole 12-bit ecosystem and with UHD's HEVC transport streams specified as 10-bit only then something had to give, so Dolby devised a way to extract and compress the 12-bit 'difference data' from the master into a separate 10-bit video stream to go along with the 10-bit HDR10 base layer. Both are combined in the display device (or player, in the case of low latency implementation) to recreate the 12-bit original. This adds to the authoring complexity, not making it impossible but making it more involved and more time-consuming than just 'set and forget'.

In case people didn't know, there aren't any 'native' 12-bit profiles for delivery of Dolby Vision to home consumers AT ALL, at the moment it's all based around squeezing the image into 10-bit (or even 8-bit!) transport streams and then rebuilding it at the other end. AFAIK the internet streaming versions don't carry any enhancement layers whatsoever, they just contain the dynamic metadata with a 10-bit stream and are upsampled to 12-bit upon decoding so this is where DV on disc can be the higher quality option, should it contain a full enhancement layer. I say that because it's not required to do so, several examples of DV on disc are just metadata-only and contain no difference data.

I think I've got it!

[Show spoiler]nope. lost it again.