JBL Link Bar support for HDR 10 and Dolby Vision

by trytoholdon

I bought a JBL Link Bar and paired it with my LG C9. When I play an Ultra HD show on Netflix via the native Netflix app on the TV (i.e. not through the Link Bar) it says “Dolby Vision” at the top right. When I play the same show via the Link Bar, it says “HDR” in the top right.

That makes me think the Link Bar doesn’t support Dolby Vision but does support HDR. But when I look up the specs for the Link Bar, it doesn’t mention any support for HDR either.

So any idea why the TV is showing HDR when I play a show? Does the Link Bar in fact support it?

BiggussDikkuss

Think of the AMLogic T962E chipset in the JBL Link bar as the same as the Quad Core S905X AMLogic chipset in the Mi Boxes / Jetstream - but with extra HDMI IN / OUT switching capabilities.

All of them package a ARM Mali-450 GPU which certainly supports 4K HDR.

Cash091

I can find absolutely nothing saying this device supports Dolby Vision. HDR10 is open source, so anyone can include it as long as the processor can handle, which it can. However, Dolby requires licensing. Nothing in JBL's page mentions Dolby Vision, and if they paid for that license you bet your bottom dollar they'd list it.

IN this case, no news is NOT good news. I'd say the Link Bar does not support Dolby Vision. TBH, I've gone back and forth between my TV app and my Nvidia Shield (which also doesn't support DV) and I can't really notice a huge difference on my C6.

TomEnom

NYTimes had an article about HDR and DD recently (paywall) ...

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/16/smarter-living/hdr-is-coming-to-a-tv-near-you-heres-why-you-should-care.html

It seems to me that consumers will clamour for DD because it is better and some hard to define 'better' sells well, but actually HDR is quite good enough for the vast majority of us (and a big improvement over no form of HDR) and has potential to become ubiquitous since it is free.

Cash091

A lot of people think that since Dolby Vision requires a license therefor it is better. Open Source software doesn't mean the software is bad. There is a lot of great software that is open source!

For those in this thread who don't know the difference between HDR10 and Dolby Vision:

Standard Dynamic Range is usually an 8-bit color image.

HDR10 is 10-bit while Dolby Vision is 12-bit. This is pretty moot as all HDR TV's are only capable of displaying 10-bit color anyway.

The big advantage Dolby Vision has over HDR10 is what is called dynamic metadata. HDR10 only supports static metadata. This data is going to include the brightest and darkest parts of whatever is on the screen.

Static metadata will mean the information will be the same for the entirety of whatever you are watching. Movie, show, or video. Dynamic metadata can have different data for each scene, even for each frame if they wanted to. This can lead to a better image, especially if a movie has a lot of dimly lit scenes and a lot of bright scenes.

One other thing to note if you are comparing the two on your OLED. LG TV's (all of my personal experience) will have different settings for SDR, HDR10, and Dolby Vision. If you are going to do a comparison, you should make sure the settings are the same to get a better apples to apples look at it.

This was a bit long winded... If I missed anything or got anything wrong, sorry.

Remember: Open source does NOT mean better! Linux is open source and it's great!