Episodes 5 of Apple TV+ shows have no Dolby Vision

Very interesting facts. I have both a Samsung 4k HDR TV and a LG OLED with Dolby Vision. Obviously the Picture Quality is absolutely amazing on the OLED with Dolby Vision enabled and I was blown away just after AppleTV+ launched. Starting with Episode 5 of “SEE” however, I noticed quite a downgrade in lighting and general contrast. Soon found out that Apple are having serious issues and a complete messed up library of HDR/DolbyVision titles.

there is more over here:

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250882137

Don’t go looking for settings on your TV’s it’s absolutely 100% an Issue on Apple’s streaming service. If this doesn’t get resolved, I’m definitely not renewing the subscription after the free trial ends as this is AppleTV+’s biggest selling point for me and other people who own premium TV’s.

Dolby Vision has to come back - and we all know it worked perfectly the first couple of days after launch.

I’m seeing the same thing. The programme information screen before choosing to play still says Dolby Vision for episode 5 of all of them, but playback is definitely HDR10.

Picture quality isn’t quite as good either, there is slightly more picture noise than the Dolby Vision episodes. It’s not enough to make it unwatchable, but it’s sad to see. I don’t understand why picture quality is suffering.

I’m hoping it’s a glitch and will be sorted soon.

I've had no issues with Dolby Vision playback on any of the shows on my LG B7 OLED either. Seems kind of overkill to completely remove Dolby Vision as some sort of "fix", and the fact that it remains on the first four episodes suggests it's actually an error of some kind.

Incidentally The Morning Show in Australia had episode 5 in Dolby Vision - we get a different encode as the show has a different title here. That further suggests that what's going on is an error.

I'll hold off watching See and For All Mankind for a few days and see (ha!) if Apple comes up with a fix for it.

I’m pleased someone else has noticed the quality. I was beginning to think it was just me.

I suspect it would be fine if a native HDR10 version was uploaded. As it is the ATV is converting Dolby Vision I think and not making a particularly good job of it. I had very similar picture quality issues using an Amazon Firestick for TV+ which is restricted to HDR10 only.

Apple are losing a major selling point if they don’t fix this fast.

A couple of things to add.

Firstly all episodes from ep1 to 6 of everything except Dickinson are now HDR10. Dickinson remains as Dolby Vision for now at least.

Secondly, devices other than the Apple TV appear to get no HDR at all. Certainly my Amazon Fire TV is stuck at SDR only.

Your screenshot above is extremely useful so thanks for posting it, and your workaround is so blindingly obvious that I cant believe I hadn’t tried it. Anyway I’ve tried it now and while I can’t say for sure if it’s working perfectly without a way of comparing to when it was all working correctly, but it certainly looks one **** of a lot better than the downgrade to HDR10.

Take a bow my friend and thank you.

The interesting thing with all of this is that for the second week in a row, The Morning Show *does* play in Dolby Vision in Australia - where it had to be returned “Morning Wars” and therefore would need to be encoded separately. It of course plays back fine in Dolby Vision, just like everything else did before the downgrade.

This indicates to me that the drop to HDR10 is *not* Apple working around a bug with the tiny number of TVs that had problems with Dolby Vision.

I’d say it’s far more likely to be a problem in the encoding chain.

I do wish Apple would offer an explanation.

I found this thread because this happening to me as well. For the last two weeks AppleTV+ on my Roku stick and FireTV stick are only in SDR. When I watch movies I own via Apple+ app they switch to HDR appropriately as does Dickinson but TMS and Elephant Queen are now locked in SDR when I know they used to go to HDR just fine.

I can confirm I made the same observation on my end.

I believe it might be a response to this: https://discussions.apple.com/thread/250812286 (which I have also experienced)

I bought a new telly between episodes 4 and 5. Spent an hour changing settings, restarting etc on episode 5 - baffled by why I couldn’t get DV - until I thought to go back to episode 4 ...

Yeah, I agree with you. The idea that Apple would deliberately dump Dolby Vision to fix another issue affecting a few users doesn’t make any sense to me.

It’s a bug or error without doubt.

I think that Apple’s strategy of intriguing secrets followed by exciting launches has made them rather paranoid when it comes to keeping their customers informed.