- No Dolby Vision on Disney+ in the EU (again)
- UK and US viewers aren't affected
- It's due to patent issues, and other streamers have settled out of court
Back in February we reported that Disney+ had dropped Dolby Vision HDR from its service in parts of Europe; Disney said at the time that was due to "technical challenges" but later conceded that "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" once the format returned to the platform.
And now it looks like Disney+ has had to drop Dolby Vision again, in 11 countries this time.
The culprit once again appears to be a court case, this time in the Unified Patent Court (UPC). And the claimant is once again InterDigital, who claimed that Disney infringes one of its video patents. Because the UPC has a wider jurisdiction than the German court, it affects Disney+ in more countries.
InterDigital published a press release about the latest verdict earlier this week. The court "ruled that InterDigital is entitled to an injunction over Disney’s infringement of an InterDigital patent covering certain video encoding techniques related to HEVC and confirmed the validity of this patent," InterDigital says.
"The UPC is a pan-European patent court which issues decisions that apply across multiple countries in the European Union (EU); here, the injunction against Disney spans 11 EU countries. Disney can appeal the decision."
The affected countries are all in the EU, so the UK isn't affected, and nor is the US, naturally: if you go to the support page for Disney+ in the UK, it'll happily sing the praises of its Dolby Vision content. That's been removed from the support pages in Europe, however.
Why Disney's not doing Dolby in Europe
The court verdict isn't the only challenge for Disney. InterDigital has sued over other patents covering HDR technology, "the dynamic overlaying of multiple video streams", and compression technologies connected to the HEVC and AVC codecs.
Although the verdict was about Dolby Vision, it also affects 3D movies on Disney+ available on Vision Pro, because those all use Dolby Vision too.
Disney isn't the only company that InterDigital says is infringing its patents, but other firms, such as Amazon, have apparently come to a settlement in order to continue offering Dolby Vision.
Disney isn't blaming technical challenges this time. In a statement to FlatpanelsHD, Disney Nordic said:
"As a result of litigation before a European patent court, we have been required to make changes to the availability of Dolby Vision and 3D in Denmark and several neighboring countries. We are disappointed that we have had to do this, and we share our customers' frustration. Disney+ continues to support the highest-quality formats, including up to 4K UHD and HDR, and we are actively exploring options to address the recent changes to ensure that we deliver the best possible viewing experience tailored to customers' devices and subscription plans."
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