Hollywood studio Lionsgate said Thursday that it will begin mastering some of its content for the Dolby Vision high dynamic range (HDR) format and Dolby Atmos object-based surround sound.
Dolby has now enlisted five studios to back its Dolby Vision HDR platform and seven to pledge support for Dolby Atmos surround sound.
The announcement left out any mention of which titles Lionsgate intends to master in Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos first, and when or how they will reach the home. Currently, no Ultra HD Blu-ray players have been announced with support for Dolby Vision output, leaving only streaming via Walmart’s OTT movie service Vudu, some other unnamed OTT service, or digital downloads.
Currently, 35 Dolby Vision titles are available to stream from Vudu, 14 of which include Dolby Atmos support. In addition, Netflix has produced a version of its original series Marco Polo with Dolby Vision support.
However, Lionsgate said it plans to offer Dolby Vision and Atmos titles in the coming months.
Read more on the Lionsgate Dolby Vision plans after the jump:
In addition to Lionsgate and Warner Bros., Dolby Vision HDR is supported by the following studios: MGM, Universal, and Sony Pictures. Most of those studios have not yet released a Dolby Vision title for the home.
More than 60 titles are available in the U.S. with Dolby Atmos support on standard and Ultra HD Blu-ray disc, and more than 100 titles are available internationally.
Studios that support Dolby Atmos include: Universal, HBO, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Sony, Fox, and Lionsgate.
On the consumer electronics side, Vizio, LG, TCL and Philips either sell now or have announced their intentions to sell this year 4K Ultra HDTVs that will accept and display Dolby Vision HDR content.
The multi-industry 4K technology association for consumer electronics devices – the Ultra HD Alliance – has specified HDR-10 as a mandatory standard for Ultra HD Premium certification complying televisions and Ultra HD Blu-ray players.
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All complying products must at their base level support the specifications established for peak luminance, black level and other criteria for HDR-10. Dolby Vision, in addition to other HDR formats such as the Technicolor/Philips format and the Hybrid Log-Gamma format, developed by the BBC and NHK for live HDR broadcasts, would be voluntary under that certification.
Dolby said that Dolby Vision was developed to provide a premium HDR experience over other formats and systems. It will also offer dynamic metadata that makes possible color grading a film at varying levels on a scene-by-scene basis, unlike HDR-10, which uses static metadata and requires color grading the entire picture at one level.
In addition, specifications for Ultra HD Blu-ray players stipulate mandatory support for HDR-10 in HDR-enabled Ultra HD Blu-ray discs. If Dolby Vision Ultra HD Blu-ray discs are eventually produced, they will at their base level also have to support and play the HDR-10 format.
Some companies, for various reasons, have opted not to support the Ultra HD Alliance’s Premium certification program.
By Greg Tarr
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