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Comcast will be the only way to watch the World Cup in Dolby Vision

Simon Cohen
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When the FIFA World Cup 2022 kicks off on November 20, you can watch the tournament in 4K and HDR, depending on your cable package or streaming service. But if you’re a Comcast Xfinity subscriber, you’ll be able to watch all the soccer action in 4K with Dolby Vision HDR.

Dolby Labs says it’s the first time the global event will be available in the company’s dynamic HDR format. To experience the broadcast in Dolby Vision, you’ll need a Dolby Vision-capable TV, a Comcast Xfinity subscription, and the company’s Xi6 cable box.

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A TV showing the Comcast Xfinity interface for World Cup 2022 coverage.
Dolby Labs / Comcast

The individual games will still be broadcast by their respective rights holders (Fox, Telemundo). But instead of presenting those feeds directly to its subscribers, Comcast will be applying the Dolby Vision format on a frame-by-frame basis, before sending that newly encoded video to Xfinity viewers.

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“By sending the feed in Dolby Vision,” Digital Trends was told by a Dolby Labs spokesperson via email, “Comcast can uniquely ensure all viewers will get to enjoy the highest HDR quality that their Dolby Vision enabled device is capable of delivering. This is because Dolby Vision can understand the full dynamic range and contrast ratio of the TV to deliver maximum performance.”

If your TV isn’t Dolby Vision-capable (currently, no Samsung TVs support the format), you’ll still be able to see the games in HDR, but they will be presented in HDR10, which is not a dynamic version of HDR. In other words, it will still look pretty great, but the colors, contrast, and brightness may not be as accurate a reflection of the real-life event.

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