- Dolby Vision and HDR10+ are unavailable on Disney+ in some European countries
- It’s possibly connected to an ongoing patent dispute
- Advanced HDR still available elsewhere right now, but Disney’s support site in the US doesn’t mention Dolby Vision at all
Has Disney dumped Dolby Vision in Europe? That’s what reports on Reddit and in multiple media outlets suggest. After Dolby Vision and HDR10+ disappeared from streams in Germany, multiple reports say that they’ve gone missing in other countries too.
According to Disney, what they’re experiencing are “technical challenges” – but as FlatpanelsHD points out, it’s quite possible that the real reason is legal rather than technical.
Disney is currently being sued in a German court over allegations of patent infringement, and Germany was the first place to lose Dolby Vision and HDR10+: it vanished in late 2025, just after the Regional Court Munich told Disney to stop infringing a specific video compression patent. And now viewers in other countries say Dolby’s disappeared from their video streams too.
The mysterious case of the disappearing Dolby
On Reddit, subscribers from France, Belgium, Netherlands, Portugal and Poland say that they’ve lost Dolby Vision and HDR10+; viewers in Nordic countries now say the same tech is gone from their streams too. (TechRadar’s UK team still has Dolby Vision showing up just fine, though.)
In a statement provided to FlatpanelsHD, Disney said: “Dolby Vision support for content on Disney+ is currently unavailable in several European countries due to technical challenges. We are actively working to restore access to Dolby Vision and will provide an update as soon as possible. 4K UHD and HDR support remain available on supported devices.”
But as FlatpanelsHD notes, Disney+ has removed “all references to Dolby Vision” from its European support pages – but, in a sign that this problem might not stay confined to Europe, mentions are also gone from its US support pages too.
That definitely lends weight to the view that the disappearing Dolby and HDR10+ is because of the patent dispute: when was the last time a streamer rewrote its website because of a temporary in-app bug?
Disney+ has also removed 3D movies in Europe that use Dolby Vision when viewed on the Apple Vision Pro, though this will perhaps impact a slightly lower number of people than on the TV apps…
The firm suing Disney, InterDigital, published a statement last year claiming that Disney owes it big time, albeit not in those exact words: “Our innovation underpins the viability of the entire streaming industry… we expect those who benefit from the use of our IP to pay for a license to it.”
Disney hasn’t said that the Dolby Vision removal is due to the legal action, but it hasn’t denied it either. And if that is the reason, that’s bad news for the European subscribers and possibly subscribers in other countries too, as Disney may decide to remove the feature there in anticipation of further legal action.
Irrespective of the reason, it’s not great for European customers: they’re still paying full price for a service that’s lost a key premium feature, even if 4K and regular HDR support remains.
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