The Disney+ streaming service has resolved an issue that had forced it to drop support for premium HDR formats and 3D in Europe.
Last month, the company stopped streaming Dolby Vision content to subscribers across Europe, and also removed its entire selection of 3D movies for Apple Vision Pro users. At the time, Disney said it had done this due to “technical challenges,” but in reality, the decision was taken as a result of accusations that it had infringed on the technology patents of a company called InterDigital.
Disney+ first stopped serving up Dolby Vision content to users in Germany in December, shortly after a Munich court ordered the company to stop infringing on a specific video compression patent owned by InterDigital. In February, the company also dropped support for the HDR formats for users in Belgium, France, Poland, Portugal, the Netherlands and other countries.
While Disney did not acknowledge the legal problems at the time, it has now admitted in a statement to FlatPanelsHD that the German patent dispute was indeed the reason for its decision.
“Dolby Vision and 3D support have now been restored on Disney+,” the company said. “As a result of a lawsuit at a German patent court, we were forced to make changes to the availability of certain advanced video formats in Germany and other markets.”
The company added that it was “disappointed” that such a measure was necessary, adding that it shared its customers’ frustration. It said it worked as fast as possible to implement a solution that would enable it to reintroduce support for the features.
Disney did not mention whether or not it has settled with InterDigital regarding its patent infringement claim, and it’s not clear if the lawsuit is still ongoing or not. It appears that Disney has somehow come up with a technical workaround that allowed it to restore Dolby Vision and 3D content without infringing on that company’s patented technology.
European users are advised to update the Disney+ app to the latest version to access the restored premium content on their devices. Dolby Vision and 3D were unavailable in most countries for just over a month. It appears that the company has no intention of compensating those users, however.
