Dolby says Dolby Vision 2 HDR should come to cheaper TVs than the original — and the basic version is less expensive to license than Dolby Vision 2 Max to achieve that

Dolby confirms that Dolby Vision 2 Max is intended to be the replacement for Dolby Vision 1 in more premium TVs Standard Dolby Vision 2 is intended to come to budget TVs that wouldn't have included DV1, and will be cheaper as a result More chips that support Dolby Vision 2 are coming to help make this happen, likely for use in 2027's models Dolby Vision 2 is a next-gen HDR standard that comes in two flavors.

Dolby Vision 2 Max is designed for premium TVs, taking takes full advantage of their higher-spec hardware to add in extra features — and it's arriving on its first TVs this month .

Meanwhile standard Dolby Vision 2 is designed to be simpler and more affordable for more budget sets, with the goal being to bring Dolby Vision 2 to TVs that previously went without it due to licensing costs, according to Dolby's experts.

I've been taking a deep dive into the technology with Dolby Laboratories' vice-president of home devices, Chris Turkstra, and director of business strategy, Jonas Klittmark — we've already discussed the ins and outs of Dolby Vision 2 coming to 4K Blu-ray , and how conversion to Dolby Vision 2 can be automated to ensure that lots of movies and shows are available in the new format .

And according to Turkstra and Klittmark, the new Dolby Vision 2 technology may be the cheapest way for TV firms to deliver better picture quality on a budget.

As Turkstra explains, the decision to make a more affordable and less demanding version of the Dolby Vision 2 technology was made with affordable TVs in mind, a market infamous for razor-thin profit margins.

"When it comes to improving picture quality, this is the cheapest bang for the buck for a TV [manufacturer] compared to a panel [upgrade], compared to a new backlighting technology, compared to anything else," he says.

"This is way less expensive than those things." He continues: "When we do [Dolby Vision 2] demos, the one that is the most impactful is the demo we have on two $300 TVs that show the difference between Dolby Vision 1 on one TV and Dolby Vision 2... it is surprisingly effective at increasing accuracy and pulling detail out." Turkstra suggests that panel hardware upgrades to deliver similar improvements would be significantly more expensive than the cost of licensing Dolby Vision 2.

I've seen the kind of comparison demo of Dolby Vision 2 on cheap TVs that Turkstra is referring to, and it's significant — though obviously I can't speak to whether Dolby's system would really be the cheapest way to a quality upgrade.

What are the differences between budget Dolby Vision 2 and the full-fat Dolby Vision 2 Max? "As we were developing Dolby Vision 2, we found that it does amazing things on premium TVs," Turkstra told me.