In a nutshell: Dolby Laboratories and Hisense have announced that Dolby Vision 2 has begun rolling out to customers as a firmware update. The first sets to get the feature all come from Hisense's 2026 lineup, and include the UX, UR9, UR8, and U7 models. Each model must be running either Google TV or VIDAA, Hisense's own television operating system, for the update to be installed.
Dolby Vision 2 is the successor to Dolby Vision, the dynamic HDR format that has adjusted brightness and color on a scene-by-scene basis for more than a decade. Dolby unveiled the sequel last September, just ahead of the IFA show in Berlin, then spent the following 11 months gradually answering questions about what it actually does.
It turns out the technology does quite a bit, with features spread across two tiers: a standard version and a higher-end variant that Dolby calls Dolby Vision 2 Max. The standard version relies on a rebuilt image engine, which is why Dolby believes existing Dolby Vision movies and games will look better as soon as the firmware update is installed.
The engine performs that work blindly, improving whatever content you put on the screen without knowing anything about it in advance. Sitting alongside it is a second feature that does the opposite, reading the metadata attached to a title – both newly authored metadata and information already embedded in older releases.
Dolby calls it Content Intelligence, and it allows the TV to follow instructions left behind by whoever mastered the content for a given scene. This helps because a murky stretch of a thriller and a floodlit soccer match require very different handling. The feature works this out automatically instead of forcing viewers to switch between picture modes.
That slider and the image engine behind it are what everyone on the standard tier gets. The Max tier is where all four of those Hisense models really stand out, starting with Authentic Motion. This feature smooths out judder while attempting to avoid the soap opera effect that plagues most motion-processing systems. Light Sense 2 is included as well, using your TV's ambient light sensor to keep dark scenes visible in a sunlit room.
It's worth noting that none of this will reach older Dolby Vision TVs, as the format requires a specific piece of silicon – the MediaTek Pentonic 800 – to handle the processing. Those sets can still play Dolby Vision 2 content, of course, but they will ignore the additional metadata included with it.
For now, content authored specifically to take advantage of that metadata remains limited, with Canal+, Peacock, and iQIYI the only streaming services Dolby has named so far. Netflix and Disney+ are absent from that list for now.
Beyond those three, Dolby has some TCL sets and European Philips TVs lined up for later this year.
Dolby Vision 2 is rolling out now, starting with select Hisense TVs
