Is Disney+ Losing Dolby Vision Dynamic HDR Streaming Due to a Patent Dispute?

According to a report in FlatPanelsHD, Disney+ users throughout Europe are apparently reporting the loss of Dolby Vision and HDR10+ dynamic HDR formats on 4K video content streamed on the Disney+ service. Titles that previously streamed in 4K resolution with either Dolby Vision or HDR10+ dynamic HDR are now streaming in basic HDR10 static HDR instead. Disney+ users in Germany first started seeing the lack of Dolby Vision as early as December, 2025 and reports have spread since then to other European countries.

As of February 2026, Disney+ users in the United States are still able to watch select titles on the service in Dolby Vision HDR, but it remains unclear if this will continue to be true or if Disney will remove the technology from all markets. Some European customers have installed VPNs (Virtual Private Networks) to spoof their geographic location, which fools the streaming service into thinking they are streaming from the United States in order to work around the issue. To be clear, we are not suggesting that affected customers take this action; we are simply reporting what some users have stated online.

The loss of Dolby Vision comes on the heels of a German court’s ruling in a patent dispute filed by InterDigital, Inc. against Disney+. InterDigital has claimed that Disney+ is currently in violation of a patent they own related to the streaming of video content using high dynamic range (HDR) technology. The German court agreed with the validity of the claim and granted an injunction against Disney+ in November of last year to cease using the alleged infringing technology to deliver HDR content. The timing of this injunction and the first reports of disappearing Dolby Vision appear to be more than coincidental.

Why It Matters

While having four times as many pixels in 4K (UHD) content compared to 1080p HD does results in a sharper picture, it’s the wider color gamut and high dynamic range capabilities of 4K/UHD content that make video content look more lifelike and vivid. But most consumer displays, including TVs and projectors, are unable to reproduce the full dynamic range and peak brightness that is used by studios to master movies and TV shows for consumer displays. A film may be mastered for peaks of 4,000 nits while a high quality OLED display may only be able to reproduce 1,000 or possibly 2,000 nit peaks. Attempting to display content mastered for 4,000 nits on a consumer display with lower peak brightness could result in loss of specular (bright) highlights, a loss of shadow detail or both.

Dynamic HDR formats like Dolby Vision and HDR10+ allow the content’s dynamic range to be adjusted at playback time on a scene by scene basis to fit the capabilities of the display. This allows consumers to see a better representation of the content creators’ “artistic intent” regardless of whether they’re watching on a DLP projector, an OLED TV or a MiniLED/LCD TV. By eliminating the dynamic HDR content options, Disney+ could be creating an inferior viewing experience for their customers, even though these customers are paying for a “premium” streaming experience.

When contacted for comment, a source at the company had this to add:

“Dolby Vision support for Disney+ content in several European countries is currently unavailable due to technical issues. We are actively exploring ways to restore it and will provide updates as soon as we can. 4K UHD and HDR support remain available on supported devices. HDR10+ has not ever been available in market in Europe to date, we expect it to be available soon.”

The Bottom Line

From Disney’s response, it appears that the company is aware of the issue and is attempting to deliver a solution to their customers. In the meantime, affected users can still access this content in 4K resolution with standard HDR10 HDR. And on TVs with good HDR tone mapping processing, results with HDR10 can be quite high quality. Still, there are many fans out there of Dolby Vision, and many TVs that do support Dolby Vision, but do not support HDR10+ nor have their own dynamic HDR tone mapping. We’re sure these customers would like to see Dolby Vision support restored in order to get the highest possible visual quality of their streamed content.