Serena Anderson
Member
The Hisense update went out today and it covers the UX, UR9, UR8 and the U7 - U7 Pro if you are in Europe - running either Google TV or VIDAA. North America, Europe and APAC all at once, over the air. Hisense beat TCL to it, and TCL plus European Philips are supposed to follow later this year with no date attached to either.
What you actually get today is the new imaging engine, Content Intelligence, and the intensity slider. That last one is the part I keep coming back to, because it is the first time Dolby has handed the viewer a dial instead of insisting the creative intent is sacred. Existing Dolby Vision titles are supposed to look better immediately on these sets, and Dolby's line is that TV hardware outran the original spec years ago, so the new engine is really just letting the panel off the leash.
The Max features are where it gets awkward. Authentic Motion and Light Sense 2 both need content authored with the new metadata, and that is not expected until the end of the year. So the Max badge is on the box now and the thing it describes shows up whenever the content does. At least there is no second firmware update needed once it arrives - the wrapper works out which metadata applies.
The bit nobody is leading with: this needs the MediaTek Pentonic 800. Dolby says more capable chips are coming and that the Pentonic 800 is being rolled out more widely than before, but if your 2026 set is not on that silicon you are not getting this, no matter what you paid. Peacock in the US and iQIYI in China is a thin launch lineup too.
If you own a UR9 and the update has landed, is the intensity slider doing anything you can actually see yet?
What you actually get today is the new imaging engine, Content Intelligence, and the intensity slider. That last one is the part I keep coming back to, because it is the first time Dolby has handed the viewer a dial instead of insisting the creative intent is sacred. Existing Dolby Vision titles are supposed to look better immediately on these sets, and Dolby's line is that TV hardware outran the original spec years ago, so the new engine is really just letting the panel off the leash.
The Max features are where it gets awkward. Authentic Motion and Light Sense 2 both need content authored with the new metadata, and that is not expected until the end of the year. So the Max badge is on the box now and the thing it describes shows up whenever the content does. At least there is no second firmware update needed once it arrives - the wrapper works out which metadata applies.
The bit nobody is leading with: this needs the MediaTek Pentonic 800. Dolby says more capable chips are coming and that the Pentonic 800 is being rolled out more widely than before, but if your 2026 set is not on that silicon you are not getting this, no matter what you paid. Peacock in the US and iQIYI in China is a thin launch lineup too.
If you own a UR9 and the update has landed, is the intensity slider doing anything you can actually see yet?
