- No Dolby Vision on Disney+ in the EU (yet)
- British and American viewers are not affected
- It’s due to patent issues, and other streamers have settled out of court
Back in February, we reported that Disney+ had removed Dolby Vision HDR from its service in parts of Europe; Disney said at the time that this was due to “technical challenges”, but later admitted that “as a result of a lawsuit in a German patent court, we were forced to change the availability of certain advanced video formats” once the format returned to the platform.
And now it seems that Disney+ has had to abandon Dolby Vision again, this time in 11 countries.
The culprit once again appears to be a court case, this time before the Unified Patent Court (UPC). And the plaintiff once again is InterDigital, which claims that Disney is infringing on one of its video patents. Because the UPC has broader jurisdiction than the German court, it affects Disney+ in more countries.
InterDigital issued a press release on the latest verdict earlier this week. The court “ruled that InterDigital was entitled to an injunction regarding Disney’s infringement of an InterDigital patent covering certain HEVC-related video encoding techniques and upheld the validity of that patent,” InterDigital said.
“The UPC is a pan-European patent court that issues rulings that apply to multiple European Union (EU) countries; here, the injunction against Disney extends to 11 EU countries. Disney can appeal the ruling.”
The countries affected are all in the EU, so the UK is not affected, and neither is the US, of course: if you go to the Disney+ UK support page, it will happily sing the praises of its Dolby Vision content. This has however been removed from the support pages in Europe.
Why Disney doesn’t make Dolby in Europe
The court verdict isn’t the only challenge for Disney. InterDigital has sued for other patents covering HDR technology, “dynamic superposition of multiple video streams” and compression technologies connected to HEVC and AVC codecs.
Although the verdict concerns Dolby Vision, it also affects 3D movies on Disney+ available on Vision Pro, as those all also use Dolby Vision.
Disney isn’t the only company that InterDigital claims is infringing on its patents, but other companies, like Amazon, have apparently reached an agreement to continue offering Dolby Vision.
Disney isn’t blaming technical issues this time around. In a statement to FlatpanelsHD, Disney Nordic said:
“As a result of litigation in a European patent court, we have been forced 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 so 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 respond to recent changes to ensure we offer the best possible visual experience, tailored to customers’ devices and subscription plans.”
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