IFA is always packed with wonderful new tech, and the 2025 edition is no different. The launch of Dolby Vision 2-enabled TVs has been one of the biggest announcements at IFA 2025, with the eminent TV technology company rolling out the latest version of its HDR tech.
And wouldn’t you just know it? Hisense took the time to launch a brand new TV featuring Dolby Vision 2, and I went had a good old look at it to see what all the fuss is about.
Dolby Vision 2 promises better HDR than ever before
Dolby Vision 2 brings a lot of new tech to the table, and as you might expect, AI is at the core of the new standard. It’s not all about AI, but it’s certainly playing a central role compared to Dolby Vision, which was released over ten years ago now.
Dolby Vision 2 uses what it calls Content Intelligence to better understand what you’re watching and optimize the screen settings for it. In that sense, the AI is analyzing the pictures and can adjust brightness, tone mapping, and so on to ensure that what you’re watching is the best it can be.
It does this in combination with another new feature called Light Sense, which basically analyzes the lighting quality of the room you’re in and feeds that information back into the Content Intelligence algorithm. In combination, the two technologies automatically adjust your picture quality.
Another new tech rolled out as part of Dolby Vision 2 is Authentic Motion, which actually fixes a problem I’ve often experienced with high-end televisions that aren’t configured properly. One of the most jarring experiences on 4K TVs is juddering—those little stutters during high-paced scenes that break your immersion.
Authentic Motion is “the world’s first creative-driven motion tool” that will make all scenes feel more cinematic, analyzing and correcting images shot-by-shot. I’m really keen to see how this works, because, as I said, it’s one of my least favorite parts of modern TVs.
Dolby Vision 2 looks incredible—but it was difficult to appreciate
There were various murmurings about the presence of Dolby Vision 2 at IFA 2025, and it was Hisense that delivered the goods. The company equipped one of its absolutely monster-sized televisions with the new technology, displaying Dolby Vision 2 on the Hisense 116ux.
It’s a mammoth bit of kit, 116 inches wide and absolutely dominating any room you put it in. It looks huge on the IFA 2025 show floor, and in a tech event filled with larger-than-life tech, that’s saying something.
Part of the Dolby Vision 2 launch is also the introduction of RGB-MiniLED tech. This is an upgraded version of MiniLED. In short, where existing MiniLED tech requires the array of blue LEDs to produce green and red light (while allowing the blue to pass through), RGB MiniLED uses individual blue, red, and green LEDs to produce incredibly accurate colors without the slight compromise that existed.
The updated tech makes the application of Dolby Vision 2 advanced dynamic data, allowing for those incredibly dark, detailed blacks, and the implementation of other on-screen tech.
But given I was experiencing Dolby Vision 2 on an enormous screen at a giant tech conference, and the screen was playing a demo, it was hard to appreciate the difference it was potentially making. Don’t get me wrong—it looked amazing. It’s a 116-inch RGB MiniLED screen. But those fine details that really make you understand what you’re seeing were hard to spot, especially as it was playing a demo.
Don’t expect Dolby Vision 2 on your existing TV
Now, onto the bad news. Existing Dolby Vision TV owners shouldn’t expect an upgrade. While Dolby Vision 2 does include specific tone mapping tech designed to help smaller, lower-quality screens, it doesn’t appear that this tech is going to be backward compatible. At least, it won’t suddenly appear in an OTA update and make your old screen feel super new again.
There are also some privacy concerns regarding Dolby Vision 2’s use of AI. The implementation of automatic content recognition tech in smart TVs has long been considered a privacy risk, and with Dolby Vision 2 analyzing everything on your screen and in the room, there are suggestions that it’s adding to that issue.
While there are some ways to stop your smart TV from spying on you, they’re not foolproof. And with more AI and other intrusive tech finding its way into smart TVs, it’s becoming a problem that’s hard to ignore, even if you’re not traditionally privacy-focused. I mean, who wants something tracking everything they watch? Definitely not me.
