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Hisense began rolling out a Dolby Vision 2 firmware update to select 2026 television models on August 6, making them the first consumer TVs in the world<\/a> to run the format on hardware sitting in buyers’ living rooms. The update reaches Hisense’s 2026 UX, UR9, UR8, and U7 series \u2014 or the U7 Pro in the European Union, Middle East and Africa, and Central and South America \u2014 on both Google TV and VIDAA operating systems, across North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region.<\/p>\n The timing makes the next-generation HDR format war concrete for buyers for the first time. Two days earlier, Samsung and Prime Video announced the launch of HDR10+ ADVANCED, the competing next-gen HDR standard, on Samsung’s 2026 TV lineup \u2014 making Prime Video the first streaming service globally<\/a> to carry that format. Now that both formats are live on shipping hardware, the choice of which TV brand to buy determines which premium HDR streaming ecosystem a viewer joins. No single 2026 television from any brand supports both Dolby Vision 2 and HDR10+ ADVANCED. Buying a Hisense means Peacock’s Dolby Vision 2 library; buying a Samsung means Prime Video’s HDR10+ ADVANCED catalog. The two camps do not intersect.<\/p>\n Hisense is a Chinese company majority-owned by a Chinese government entity and is currently contending with an active federal class-action lawsuit and a standing court order over its data-collection practices. Buyers choosing it for its HDR leadership should factor in those considerations before connecting the TV to their home network. This article covers both: what the format milestone means technically, what the ecosystem split means for buyers, and what the legal context means for anyone actually using the set.<\/p>\n What the Update Delivers: Two Tiers of a Redesigned Standard<\/p>\n Dolby Vision 2 is a complete architectural revision of the original Dolby Vision standard<\/a>, which debuted at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2014 as the first HDR format on the market<\/a>. The original Dolby Vision improved on the industry-standard HDR10 by adding dynamic metadata<\/a> \u2014 frame-by-frame or scene-by-scene tone-mapping instructions telling the display how to adjust brightness and color rather than applying one static instruction for the whole film. Dolby Vision 2 adds an AI-powered layer on top of that system: the Dolby Image Engine and Content Intelligence.<\/p>\n Content Intelligence continuously analyzes what category of content is on screen \u2014 sports, cinema, gaming \u2014 and applies appropriate tone-mapping profiles dynamically. This is distinct from the prior Dolby Vision IQ feature, which adapted picture processing to ambient room lighting. Content Intelligence adapts to what is being watched.<\/p>\n The format arrives in two product tiers. The baseline Dolby Vision 2 tier goes to all supported 2026 Hisense models via the firmware update. It delivers the improved Dolby Image Engine and Content Intelligence on all Dolby Vision content \u2014 meaning that every movie and series already available in Dolby Vision on Peacock, Netflix, Disney+, and other compatible services will immediately process better on update-receiving TVs<\/a>, with no new content required. The Dolby Vision 2 Max tier, reserved for the UX, UR9, UR8, and U7 Pro models, adds three capabilities unavailable on standard DV2 sets:<\/p>\n Authentic Motion addresses judder and soap-opera effect elimination, but unlike prior MEMC (Motion Estimation and Motion Compensation) implementations that apply blanket motion smoothing, Authentic Motion uses shot-level creative metadata to apply processing only when and at the intensity the original director specified \u2014 preserving the cinematic feel on wide shots while smoothing fast action sequences.<\/p>\n Light Sense 2 is an ambient-light-adaptive picture system: the TV’s sensor detects room lighting and adjusts processing in real time without undermining the creative intent of dark scenes.<\/p>\n Pro settings give enthusiasts granular manual control over display performance.<\/p>\n Why No Pre-2026 TV Can Get Dolby Vision 2: The Chip Requirement<\/p>\n Dolby Vision 2 is not a software-only upgrade. It requires a MediaTek Pentonic 800 system-on-chip, or a newer chip, and will not be retrofitted to pre-2026 televisions regardless of their prior Dolby Vision certification. The chip requirement<\/a> is confirmed across all Dolby Vision 2 launch partners.<\/p>\n The Pentonic 800 is the world’s first TV system-on-chip to natively integrate Dolby Vision 2, through its MiraVision Pro PQ Engine<\/a> \u2014 a suite of AI-powered picture quality algorithms announced at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 2025. The Pentonic 800’s neural processing unit (NPU) is 50% faster and uses 60% less memory bandwidth<\/a> than its predecessor, the Pentonic 700. That processing headroom is what Dolby Vision 2’s Content Intelligence requires: analyzing scene content, categorizing it by type, and generating per-shot tone-mapping instructions in real time at the throughput of live 4K content is computationally intensive in ways that prior TV chipsets could not handle reliably.<\/p>\n This is the technical explanation for why Dolby Vision 2 is a strict generational cutoff. A 2025 Hisense television with a Pentonic 700 chip carries the hardware capability of the prior generation’s AI, which was designed for the prior generation’s processing requirements. The format was built around the specific NPU architecture of the 800 series. There is no workaround.<\/p>\n What Content Is Actually Available<\/p>\n The streaming content arriving first for Dolby Vision 2 is not natively mastered in the format. According to TCL Europe product development director Marek Maciejewski, existing Dolby Vision titles will be converted to Dolby Vision 2<\/a> upon the technology’s release, providing an immediate improvement; studios are not expected to begin mastering content natively for Dolby Vision 2 until 2027 at the earliest.<\/p>\n Three streaming services have committed to Dolby Vision 2 delivery: Peacock (the first Western streaming service to support the format, along with Dolby AC-4 audio), CANAL+ (the first content distributor confirmed at Dolby’s IFA 2025 announcement<\/a>), and iQIYI (extending the format’s reach across Asian streaming markets).<\/p>\n The practical consequence for a buyer today: an update-receiving Hisense 2026 TV will immediately deliver improved processing on existing Dolby Vision titles from the moment the firmware installs. The larger visual gains from natively mastered Dolby Vision 2 content will follow as studios build the new workflows, likely across 2027.<\/p>\n What the Competing Camp Looks Like: HDR10+ ADVANCED on Samsung<\/p>\n Samsung’s HDR10+ ADVANCED, announced August 4 in partnership with Prime Video, is the royalty-free answer to Dolby Vision 2 \u2014 built on the same HDR10+ base standard<\/a> that Samsung co-developed with 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment and Panasonic in 2017. HDR10+ ADVANCED adds two headline capabilities: Enhanced Overall Brightness, which uses extended statistical metadata alongside AI tone mapping to get more out of a TV’s peak brightness range; and Intelligent Motion Smoothing, which applies frame processing differently for sports than for cinematic content.<\/p>\n The key architectural difference between the two competing next-gen formats: Dolby Vision 2 uses a proprietary end-to-end pipeline with strict Dolby certification requirements, including certified mastering displays and Dolby-approved implementation on the SoC. HDR10+ ADVANCED uses the royalty-free SMPTE ST 2094-40 metadata standard with additional enhancement layers; manufacturers implement it themselves without Dolby’s factory certification workflow. Samsung claims the HDR10+ ecosystem<\/a> now includes 183 adopter companies and more than 22,000 certified products.<\/p>\n One significant transparency gap accompanied Samsung’s launch: the company confirmed HDR10+ ADVANCED on its 2026 TV lineup but declined to publish a model-by-model compatibility list, and Prime Video did not disclose which specific titles would support it or precisely when. The ecoustics and TechRadar coverage<\/a> of the launch noted that owners must check their TV’s specifications and firmware status individually. By contrast, Hisense’s DV2 rollout names specific model series and is actively delivering firmware updates to those sets.<\/p>\n No TV Covers Both: What the Format Split Means Before You Buy<\/p>\n The format-war picture as of August 6, 2026:<\/p>\n Samsung has never supported any Dolby Vision product \u2014 not original Dolby Vision, not Dolby Vision IQ, and not Dolby Vision 2. A Samsung buyer gets HDR10+ ADVANCED via Prime Video. LG, meanwhile, opted out of Dolby Vision 2 support entirely in its 2026 lineup \u2014 leaving it without either next-gen format. TCL and Philips (via TP Vision) are committed to Dolby Vision 2 but have not yet delivered it \u2014 TCL expects a firmware update in Q4 2026<\/a>; Philips has indicated late 2026.<\/p>\n For buyers who primarily use Peacock, CANAL+, Netflix, Disney+, or Apple TV+: those services support Dolby Vision and are expected to carry Dolby Vision 2 going forward. A Hisense, TCL, or Philips 2026 set is the path to Dolby Vision 2.<\/p>\n For buyers who primarily use Prime Video: HDR10+ ADVANCED on a 2026 Samsung TV delivers the format’s first streaming implementation.<\/p>\n For buyers who use both: no single 2026 TV exists that delivers both next-gen formats. This is structurally analogous to the Blu-ray vs. HD-DVD format split, where the winning format was determined not by picture quality but by content-ecosystem alliances \u2014 and where buying the wrong format meant permanent incompatibility with one major studio’s catalog. The difference here is that both camps will persist: Dolby and Samsung have no shared standard on the horizon, and their streaming partners are different.<\/p>\n The rollout for Hisense’s update is expected to complete over the coming weeks rather than arriving as a single simultaneous push. Owners of the 2026 UX, UR9, UR8, or U7\/U7 Pro can check for updates manually in their TV’s system settings. The update is free.<\/p>\n Data Privacy: What Owners of Hisense Televisions Must Know Before Going Online<\/p>\n Hisense Group is headquartered in Qingdao, China, and is majority-owned by the Qingdao State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), a Chinese government holding entity. Three Chinese laws create a statutory data-sharing obligation that applies to Hisense regardless of where its US subsidiary is based, where its servers are physically located, or what its US privacy policy states:<\/p>\n China’s National Intelligence Law (2017), Article 7 requires that all organizations and citizens must support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work in accordance with the law. This applies to any entity operating under Chinese jurisdiction on demand.<\/p>\n China’s Data Security Law (2021) imposes data localization and government access provisions \u2014 requiring that data generated or processed in China be available to government authorities under defined conditions. A December 2020 DHS advisory<\/a> stated explicitly that Chinese law compels firms operating under Chinese jurisdiction to secretly cooperate with Chinese security and intelligence services, potentially including turning over data on request even when that is illegal in the jurisdiction in which the firm operates.<\/p>\n China’s Cybersecurity Law (2017) creates additional network security obligations and cooperation requirements for critical information infrastructure operators.<\/p>\n These obligations are not contested claims \u2014 they are the plain text of Chinese law, confirmed by U.S. government advisories and cited in multiple federal and state legal actions.<\/p>\n Active legal proceedings: On December 15, 2025, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed suit against Hisense, and on December 17, 2025, a Texas district court issued a temporary restraining order<\/a> \u2014 the first of its kind against any TV manufacturer \u2014 prohibiting Hisense from collecting, using, selling, sharing, or transferring automatic content recognition (ACR) data on Texas residents while the case proceeds. The lawsuit’s core allegation: Hisense’s ACR technology allegedly captures images and audio<\/a> of whatever appears on the television screen as often as every 500 milliseconds across all inputs \u2014 including cable boxes and gaming consoles connected via HDMI \u2014 and transmits that data to Hisense’s Chinese parent. Hisense denies these allegations.<\/p>\n On May 12, 2026, a separate federal class-action complaint was filed against Hisense USA Corporation in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, naming 14 legal claims including violations of the Video Privacy Protection Act, the Federal Wiretap Act, the California Invasion of Privacy Act, and the Department of Justice Bulk Sensitive Data Transfer Rule, which took effect April 8, 2025, and restricts transfers of Americans’ bulk sensitive data to countries of concern \u2014 a list that includes China. Full details on both proceedings are available at the State of Surveillance<\/a> and IAPP coverage<\/a>.<\/p>\n