This week, ahead of IFA 2025, Dolby announced Dolby Vision 2, the next-gen version of its advanced HDR format. It comes in two flavors: Dolby Vision 2, and Dolby Vision 2 Max, which adds even more picture-quality enhancement, and will only be supported on TVs that meet certain performance benchmarks as certified by Dolby.
Obviously, the big question is which TVs will support it, and whether current TVs might be updated with it, if they’re have the right specs.
So we approached the makers of the best TVs for official comment, and spoke to people in the industry to get the behind the scenes view. For the most part, the TV makers are being cagey about it, but we have some concrete responses, and some more unofficial information from those in the know.
Which TV makers will support Dolby Vision?
Hisense
Let’s start with Hisense, because it’s the official launch partner with Dolby for Dolby Vision 2. It’s confirmed that at least a small portion of its current elite TVs, including the Hisense UX116 RGB mini-LED TV (which we recently tested) will have support. Exactly how many current TVs will be updated is unclear, but I’d expect the focus to be more on its inclusion in future TVs.
LG
LG is also a notable one, because it’s only TV maker to officially say it’s not working on Dolby Vision 2 support. LG told TechRadar “We currently do not have plans to support Dolby Vision 2 HDR.” Not only that, but LG told us “Our understanding is an upgrade (any brand) is not possible as Dolby Vision 2 improvements are hardware related, not just software.”
I’ll come back to that comment about upgrading existing TVs later, because it doesn’t appear to be accurate (as you can maybe guess from Hisense’s plans).
Samsung
Samsung hasn’t provided an official response to the question of Dolby Vision 2 support, but it’s my understanding that it’s not planning to change its long-standing stance on HDR – expect Samsung to stay with HDR10+ for the foreseeable future.
TCL
TCL also didn’t provide an official response to the question of Dolby Vision 2 support, but there was a subtle hint about its stance on its stand at IFA. See if you can spot it in this image.
My understanding is that if Dolby Vision 2 picks up support among the key streamers, we should expect it to arrive on TCL’s future TVs without much delay.
Sony
Sony told me: “Dolby is one of our important partners. Our current TVs are compatible with Dolby Vision and Atmos. So are we in discussion with Dolby? Yes, but at the moment we don’t really have a clear statement to make about Dolby Vision 2.”
More to come…
Several other TV makers didn’t respond by the time of writing, and I wasn’t able to get any hints from around the industry about their plans.
What about updating existing TVs?
I’ve tried to dig into LG’s statement about upgrading not being possible, and it seems that perhaps there’s some confusion. Dolby declined to respond to this claim officially, but my understanding from discussions with people in the industry is that it should be theoretically possible to upgrade some existing TVs, but it’s a small list, and it’s still not 100% straightforward.
LG’s statement that Dolby Vision 2 requires a hardware upgrade appears to be true, but the hardware in question is built into MediaTek’s Pentonic 800 processor for TVs, which is already used in several TVs available to buy today (including from Hisense, unsurprisingly). As you’ve just read above, Hisense has plans to add support to at least one existing TV that uses that MediaTek chip.
But it also seems possible that even if a TV uses that chip, there could be some other part of its specification or performance that would block Dolby Vision 2 certification, so having the chip doesn’t guarantee anything. And the chip is only in a limited number of TVs, all released within the last six months.
However, even beyond whether it’s technically possible to upgrade existing TVs, there’s also the question of motivation. One TV industry insider I spoke to said that even if TV’s can be upgraded, we generally shouldn’t expect TV makers to put in the time, money and effort when there’s no Dolby Vision 2 content available, and we don’t when that content will arrive.
Reading between the lines, I’m also guessing that there’s a financial element – TV makers would prefer for you to buy a new set to get Dolby Vision 2, I expect.
Which is a bit of a shame, because it would be great to have Dolby Vision 2 on cheaper TVs especially, since it’s an impressive upgrade on budget screens.
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