There has been a new development in the Walt Disney Company’s ongoing patent row with the American technology company InterDigital, with Disney+ reenabling HDR10 for some subscribers in Europe after switching it off earlier this year.
The Disney+ streaming service has not offered any Dolby Vision or 3D content in eleven EU countries since the middle of June, and it also pulled 4K and HDR10 content in July. The company did that after losing a patent lawsuit to InterDigital, which is demanding that Disney pay to license the HEVC video codec.
Disney has refused to pay up, claiming that InterDigital is asking for it to pay too much. While it says it supports the protection of intellectual property and is willing to pay a “reasonable fee” to license proprietary technology, it’s refusing to do so in this case. It argues that its stance is necessary to prevent higher costs being passed onto consumers.
But instead of higher costs, Disney+ subscribers in the affected countries are instead getting an inferior service that doesn’t come with all of the advertised features they thought they were paying for. That’s why Euroconsumers recently filed a lawsuit against Disney on behalf of several European consumer rights groups, including Italy’s Altroconsumo, Belgium’s Testachats and DECO PROteste in Portugal. Euroconsumers is demanding compensation for subscribers from Disney.
However, Disney doesn’t seem to want to fork out any compo either, and has instead looked for ways to restore the missing services without infringing on InterDigital’s HEVC patents. It already restored 4K content for some users on select devices in August, and it’s now bringing back HDR10 to some users too.
Disney’s workaround is to use the VP9 and VP9-2 codecs instead of HEVC. According to Disney, all of its titles that were previously available in 4K resolution using HEVC are now available with VP9, while all those that used to be available in HDR10 have been restored with the help of VP9-2.
The only problem with this workaround is that it’s not really very good, because there are millions of TVs and media players that don’t support the VP9 or VP9-2 codecs. They’re currently supported by newer Android TV and Google TV devices from Sony, Philips and TCL, and they also work with Amazon’s Fire TV devices and Hisense TVs running the Vidaa platform from 2019 and later. But all other TVs, including those from Samsung and LG Electronics, lack support for the VP9 codecs, and so they still can’t watch Disney+’s premium content formats.
For instance, FlatpanelsHD reported that Disney+’s 4K and HDR content still isn’t available when using an Nvidia Shield or Apple TV 4K device to access the service. Panasonic TVs and games consoles also can’t get 4K or HDR10 content, it said.
In other words, it’s a halfhearted workaround that cannot really be seen as a long term solution for Disney – and it has also led to InterDigital filing yet another complaint. Apparently, InterDigital also owns patents for technologies used by both of the VP9 codecs, and is demanding that Disney pay to use those too. So if InterDigital can get another ruling in its favour, Disney+ subscribers in the affected countries could suddenly see their premium content disappear once again.
Disney is reportedly appealing the European Patent Court’s ruling in favour of InterDigital and obviously hopes it can convince the judges to change their mind, but it’s far from clear if the company will obtain the outcome it hopes for.
