Buying a TV in 2026 can sometimes mean picking a side in a format war you know very little about. Dolby Vision 2 has been nothing more than rumors and press releases for months, but it was finally released on August 6 and met with some confusion over the reality compared to the picture painted by Dolby when the tech was announced.
If you, like many, have been putting off the upgrade until the dust has settled, you might want to check the details of the eventual rollout. This isn’t as much about timing as it is about choosing your brand, since some of the industry’s biggest names have now quietly stepped out of the queue.
Dolby and Hisense announced this month that Dolby Vision 2 was now live on select 2026 Hisense sets, making them the first consumer devices to run the format. The UX, UR9, UR8, and U7 lines running Google TV or VIDAA went first, rolling out across North America, Europe, and Asia-Pacific regions over the following weeks.
Those four lines are also the first to feature Dolby Vision 2 Max, which is an even higher tier that adds Authentic Motion and ambient-light handling from Light Sense 2.
How this was delivered is important here, as this came as a firmware update to TVs that were already in people’s homes. MediaTek’s Pentonic 800, which was needed to receive the update, was built into the models from the start, so no one had to actually spend more money to get more features.
What Dolby Vision 2 actually changes
You don’t need new content to experience the difference
For most new formats in the TV world, we usually have to wait for new content created with the tech in mind before we get the benefit (8K TVs come to mind). But with Dolby Vision 2, users are promised they’ll notice the improvement straight away, across everything they already stream in Dolby Vision. That includes movies and live sports, because the fresh image engine can reprocess existing Dolby Vision content.
Of course, this isn’t native Dolby Vision 2 content, so that’s still to come. CANAL+, iQIYI, and Peacock have all said they’ll be mastering future content in the format, but you’ll notice that the biggest players: Netflix, Disney+, HBO Max, and Prime Video are all missing from the list.
Still, the fact is that the benefit doesn’t require new, remastered titles, which isn’t the case for Dolby’s direct rival. Samsung’s HDR10+ Advanced, which went live on Prime Video in August, only improves the viewing experience on content made for it.
Who’s in, and who’s out?
The list of holdouts tells us a lot
Hisense is already shipping models with the tech built-in, and TCL has confirmed Dolby Vision 2 for its 2026 SQD mini-LED range, including the X11L flagship, the QM8L, the QM7L, and the RM9L. That’s all via a free firmware update, though the timing has already moved slightly from summer to the back half of this year. TCL made the same chipset switch that Hisense did, moving to the Pentonic 800, which is what makes the update possible.
Philips is the third brand name to confirm its involvement (though the applicable models aren’t sold in the US), with the OLED811, OLED911, and OLED951 all listed for support.
That leaves a lot of conspicuous absences. LG’s 2026 OLEDs, including the C6 and G6, don’t support Dolby Vision 2 and won’t be getting it, and there’s no HDMI 2.2 either. LG designs its own Alpha processors rather than buying MediaTek silicon, so the capability has to be engineered in rather than switched on, and the company has said it wants to see how support evolves before committing.
Sony is in a similar bind for a more boring reason, since it carried over the Pentonic 1000 for 2026 rather than upgrading, and told FlatpanelsHD it is neither for nor against the format while continuing to ship standard Dolby Vision. Samsung, meanwhile, has never supported Dolby Vision in any form and isn’t about to start, having put its weight behind the royalty-free HDR10+ line instead.
So should you hold out for Dolby Vision 2?
That depends on which TV you’ve already got your eye on
If your shortlist already had a Hisense or TCL mini-LED on it, then you’re in luck. Without changing anything, you’ll get Dolby Vision 2 as a free firmware upgrade, provided you pay attention to model numbers. Hisense’s support starts at the UR8 and climbs, and TCL’s is confirmed on the SQD and RGB mini-LED sets rather than the whole range.
However, if you had your heart set on an LG OLED or Sony Bravia, the answer gets more complicated. I wouldn’t let this change your mind, per se, as Dolby Vision 2 streams carry the standard Dolby Vision layer underneath, so an older set simply ignores the extra metadata and plays the version it understands, exactly as HDR10+ content has always downgraded.
Physical media collectors actually have more to complain about, given where 4K Blu-ray players have landed on all this.
It’s never a great idea to pay for a sticker, and this one’s argument is weaker than most. Dolby Vision 2 Max is what’s probably going to be worth it in the long run, and Vision 2 more broadly has only been adopted so far by three streaming services, so you’re not getting a lot of return for your investment right now. We made the case for not waiting back in February, and that reasoning still holds up, even if the facts have shifted slightly.
The best version of a new format is the one that makes your existing library look better on hardware you already own, and for a few thousand lucky Hisense TV owners, that’s exactly what turned up in an overnight update last month.
