This one Dolby Vision 2 feature will transform the way we watch TV – here’s how
Dolby timed its recent announcement of Dolby Vision 2, a wide-ranging overhaul of the existing Dolby Vision HDR format, to coincide with the recent IFA 2025 show in Berlin. Not only did Dolby announce Dolby Vision 2 at IFA, but it also demonstrated key components of its new tech at the show.
The improvements provided by Dolby Vision 2 promise to prevent HDR pictures from looking too dark – a common complaint about the format – and also improve TV ambient light detection so pictures can look good across a range of room lighting conditions (something the existing Dolby Vision IQ picture mode was designed to address, but that will be improved further).
Dolby Vision 2 will come in two flavors: a basic version, and a Max version designed for higher-end TVs. This latter version will also include a feature called Authentic Motion, a “creative driven motion control tool to make scenes feel more authentically cinematic without unwanted judder on a shot-by-shot basis,” according to Dolby.
My colleague Matt Bolton got a demo of Authentic Motion at IFA. Although I wasn’t at the show, after reading through the details of Dolby’s announcement, it’s the Dolby Vision 2 feature I’m most interested in, mostly because it aims to fix a stubborn picture quality issue I see even on the best TVs: motion artifacts.
TrueCut Motion redux?
The core idea behind Authentic Motion isn’t new – a company called Pixelworks had been demonstrating a similar process called TrueCut Motion at trade shows like CES for years.
TrueCut Motion is a tool that directors and cinematographers can use to variably control frame rate in their productions on a scene-by-scene basis – that’s basically what Authentic Motion does, except TrueCut Motion does it with real extra frames, and Authentic Motion uses motion processing techniques.
TrueCut Motion has already been used for several high-profile movies such as Avatar: The Way of Water and, most recently, The Wild Robot, both of which were presented in a ‘motion graded’ high frame rate version at select theaters.
The benefit to varying a movie’s frame rate is that it can reduce picture judder, a motion ‘blurring’ effect in high-action scenes, or ones with long camera pans. Such effects aren’t so much of a problem when watching movies in a typical theater, where the projected image is relatively dim. But it can be an issue in IMAX and Dolby Cinema theaters since these use powerful laser projection systems, and the brighter pictures those projectors deliver can emphasize motion artifacts such as judder.
Judder is also a problem for viewing at home on the best mini-LED TVs and, more recently, the best OLED TVs, which have become notably brighter over the past few years.
All TVs provide some form of motion processing, with customizable adjustments to reduce judder. However, these can give movies an artificial-looking “soap opera effect,” something some viewers actually prefer, much to the horror of film directors like Martin Scorsese, an early advocate for the Filmmaker Mode picture preset on TVs that shuts off all motion processing.
The long-range plan for Pixelworks was to extend its TrueCut Motion ecosystem to TVs, which would be able to display the variable frame rate motion-graded version of a movie in the same way it was presented in theaters.
At demos I caught at CES, the company displayed before and after TrueCut Motion-graded clips from movies like The Hobbit and Avatar: The Way of Water on modified TVs, and the results were fantastic: fast-moving actors and objects went from looking blurry to completely solid, and there was also none of the soap opera effect that makes images originally shot at 24 frames per second appear artificially sped up.
Authentic Motion for the win
It’s been a while since we’ve heard from Pixelworks with its TrueCut Motion tech, but Dolby is going for the same kind solution to judder via Dolby Vision 2 Max with Authentic Motion.
It gives the film creators control over your TV’s motion processing, enabling them to turn it up or down (or off completely) on a shot-by-shot basis, with 10 levels of strength – so it can be used to reduce judder in scenes prone to it, and turned off for all other scenes.
And given Dolby’s pervasive influence in both the professional production and consumer electronics industries, there’s a good chance we will soon be watching judder-free, variable motion movies at home.
So far, Hisense is the only TV manufacturer to announce a partnership with Dolby to bring Dolby Vision 2 to new TVs, which we should see as early as 2026. TechRadar has reached out to other TV manufacturers about their Dolby Vision 2 support plans, but we’ve yet to hear any confirmation beyond “we’re evaluating the opportunity.”
(Samsung, a staunch HDR10+ supporter, has never licensed Dolby Vision for its TVs, though its possible the new features provided by Dolby Vision 2 Max could make it reconsider.)
As someone who has watched demos of variable motion-graded clips, and even full movies – I saw the TrueCut Motion high frame rate version of Avatar: The Way of Water when it was out in theaters, and also the TrueCut Motion remaster of the original Avatar on an Apple Vision Pro that Pixelworks lent me – I fully endorse any version of this technology coming to homes.
Recent TVs have made incredible strides when it comes to brightness, local dimming, and color reproduction, and motion handling is the next TV picture quality frontier.
