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What is HDR10 vs Dolby Vision?

HDR10 is the open HDR standard (royalty-free, used by YouTube). Dolby Vision is proprietary (licensed by Dolby, used by some streaming services and 4K Blu-rays). Both deliver HDR; Dolby Vision adds dynamic per-scene metadata for slightly better tone mapping. For YouTube specifically, only HDR10 is served.

Also called:hdr10 · dolby vision · dv

Both are HDR formats — wider color and brightness range than SDR. The differences:

HDR10: static metadata. The HDR brightness range is defined once per video. Royalty-free, mass-market, every HDR display supports it.

Dolby Vision: dynamic metadata. The HDR range is redefined per scene. Slightly better tone mapping for displays that don't cover the full source range. Licensed by Dolby; not universally supported.

YouTube serves HDR10 only. They went with the royalty-free option (same reasoning as their codec choices — VP9 / AV1 over H.265). Dolby Vision content is on Netflix, Apple TV+, Disney+, 4K Blu-ray, but not YouTube.

For downloads: HDR10 from YouTube is fully recoverable. The downloaded file preserves the HDR signal. Playing it on an HDR display gives you the source HDR experience; playing on an SDR display tone-maps automatically.

Common questions

Is Dolby Vision better than HDR10?
Slightly, for displays that don't cover the source HDR range — Dolby Vision's per-scene metadata helps tone mapping. For displays that do cover the range, identical output. The bigger factor is the display's actual HDR capability, not the format.

Related terms

HDR (high dynamic range)

HDR (high dynamic range) is a video signaling standard that carries a wider range of brightness and color than standard SDR video.

Color space

A color space is the mathematical model that describes which colors a video file represents.

Codec

A codec is the algorithm that encodes (compresses) and decodes raw audio or video into a smaller stream.

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