- No Dolby Vision on Disney+ in the EU (again)
- UK and US viewers are not affected
- It is due to patent problems and other streamers have reached out-of-court settlements.
In February we reported that Disney+ had removed Dolby Vision HDR from its service in some parts of Europe; Disney said at the time that it was due to “technical challenges,” but later admitted that “as a result of a lawsuit in 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 abandon Dolby Vision again, this time in 11 countries.
The culprit again appears to be a court case, this time in the Unified Patent Court (UPC). And the plaintiff is again InterDigital, which claimed that Disney infringes one of its video patents. Because the UPC has broader 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 for Disney’s infringement of an InterDigital patent covering certain HEVC-related video coding techniques and upheld the validity of this patent,” InterDigital says.
“The UPC is a pan-European patent court that issues decisions that apply in multiple European Union (EU) countries; here, the injunction against Disney covers 11 EU countries. Disney can appeal the decision.”
All affected countries are in the EU, so the UK isn’t affected, and neither is the US, naturally – if you go to the Disney+ UK support page, it’ll happily sing the praises of its Dolby Vision content. However, this was removed from the support pages in Europe.
Why Disney doesn’t use Dolby in Europe
The court verdict is not the only challenge for Disney. InterDigital has sued for 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 on Dolby Vision, it also affects the 3D movies on Disney+ available in Vision Pro, because they all also use Dolby Vision.
Disney is not the only company that InterDigital says is infringing its patents, but other companies, such as Amazon, have apparently reached an agreement to continue offering Dolby Vision.
Disney doesn’t blame technical problems this time. In a statement to FlatpanelsHD, Disney Nordic said:
“As a result of litigation before a European patent court, we have been asked 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 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 we offer the best possible viewing experience tailored to customers’ devices and subscription plans.”
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