Disney+ streaming customers in Europe, who were already being short-changed on their subscriptions, are now getting an even rougher deal after the service pulled all 4K resolution and HDR10 content from its platform. With Dolby Vision and 3D support disappearing last month, it means that premium subscribers no longer get anything like the quality they’d signed up for.
The latest decision pertains to a months-long patent dispute that began last year involving a U.S. company called InterDigital, which recently won an injunction against the Walt Disney Company at the Unified Patent Court in Germany. That court ruled that Disney had violated one of InterDigit’s patents covering certain video encoding techniques related to HEVC, and said the ruling was enforceable across much of the European Union.
Following that ruling, Disney+ removed support for Dolby Vision and 3D content from its European library. Now, for some reason, it has gone even further, also stopping European subscribers from accessing all 4K and HDR10 content on its platform. The removal was first reported by FlatpanelsHD, which received multiple reports from European users.
Disney+’s Nordic and Baltic arm told FlatpanelsHD in a statement that it has “temporarily removed support for 4K UHD and HDR on Disney+.” It added that it’s “disappointed” and “shares our customer’s frustration.” Finally, it promised that it’s “working hard to restore support as quickly as possible.”
The removal of the functionality is likely to upset thousands of Europeans who currently pay for subscriptions to Disney+’s premium tier. When the company first pulled its Dolby Vision library, those subscribers were still getting something for their money because they could still stream movies and shows in 4K with HDR10, which wasn’t available to lower tier subscribers. But with those features now gone, premium subscribers are paying more, without getting any extra benefits in terms of picture quality. At present, the only benefits their premium subscription gets them are Dolby Atmos audio, the ability to watch four concurrent streams and ad-free viewing. But the biggest premium features have disappeared.
What’s even more frustrating is that Disney hasn’t given any indication of when its premium content might return. Nor has it said if it intends to compensate those subscribers for losing the features that most likely convinced them to shell out more money for the service.
Neither has Disney said what prompted the decision to pull the plug on 4K and HDR10. There has been no mention of any additional court rulings in favour of InterDigital, though it’s possible that the American company has threatened further action against Disney if it didn’t take these steps.
As for Disney’s claim that it’s “working hard” to get the missing features restored, it’s not clear what this really means. There does exist the possibility of an appeal against the court ruling, but going down that route would likely take some time, and there’s no guarantee it could even win a temporary stay of execution on the injunction won by InterDigital. A second option for Disney is to just bite the bullet and pay whatever InterDigital is asking for in terms of licensing fees to be able to use its streaming technologies. However, Disney has given no induction thus far that it wants to do that.
Then again, that’s precisely what Amazon did earlier this year, when it reached a settlement with InterDigital that allowed it to continue showing Dolby Vision content on Amazon Prime Video. The terms of that agreement were never made public.
