Some Apple TV 4K owners are reporting some content from Apple’s streaming service, Apple TV+, isn’t playing in Dolby Vision HDR on their set-top boxes connected to 4K Dolby Vision HDR-compatible TVs.
The past two weeks have seen several users post about the issue on the MacRumors forums, Twitter, Reddit and Apple’s discussion pages. The issue seems to not only be affecting new episodes as they become available, but also existing episode that had previously played back in Dolby Vision.
Viewers say arly episodes of “See,” “The Morning Show” and “For All Mankind” are no longer being streamed in dynamic Dolby Vision HDR, but instead playback in HDR10 format on TVs that support Dolby Vision. New episodes that were released today also playback in HDR10, despite the fact the content is designated as offering Dolby Vision HDR support label on the summary screens.
We have tried both older episodes and new episodes on our Apple TV 4K, connected to a Dolby Vision-compatible VIZIO TV, and the content shows as playing back in Dolby Vision.
MacRumors points out the differences between HDR10 and Dolby Vision HDR:
Compared to static HDR10 which works uniformly across content, Dolby Vision HDR use dynamic image metadata that enables Dolby Vision-capable TVs to adapt the extended color gamut and increased contrast range of HDR on a scene-by-scene and even frame-by-frame basis. Losing the DV HDR support can result in scenes that look too dark, appear like a negative image, or have an odd tint to them.
The issue doesn’t affect all of the shows on Apple TV+, as some users report “The Elephant Mother,” “Dickinson,” and “Snoopy in Space” still appear to be streaming in full Dolby Vision HDR.
It isn’t known if the issue is due to a bug in the Apple TV’s Match Dynamic Range feature that’s preventing the set-top box from outputting the source content correctly, or if Apple has removed Dolby Vision support from the affected content while it resolves a problem with streaming the content in Dolby Vision.
Apple has yet to comment on the issue. We’ll keep you posted.