Disney+ restores 4K in Europe after court ruling, HDR still pending

Full text

European customers can stream Disney+ in 4K again

HDR isn't back in affected countries, but Disney+ is working on it

Affected customers can contact Disney+ to request a partial refund

Disney+ has begun restoring 4K support for Disney+ subscribers in Europe after being forced to remove 4K and HDR in some countries last week. That's good news, but it may cause issues on some devices, and HDR hasn't yet returned in the affected areas.

As Disney+ told us: "We have adopted an alternative technology to enable 4K UHD and HDR following a recent court ruling and have begun restoring 4K UHD support on Disney+. This may cause 4K UHD to be unavailable on some devices. We recognise the inconvenience this may cause and are working to increase device support for 4K UHD and restore HDR as quickly as we can."

What's happening with Disney+ 4K and HDR

Disney+ removed 4K and HDR from its Premium plan in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Romania and Sweden. Both features are still available in all other countries where Disney+ operates, and the removal only applies to streaming: downloads aren't affected.

The removal was the result of a court ruling, and while Disney+ doesn't go into detail about that, it looks like another video streaming patent dispute , hence the adoption of a different 4K technology to bring 4K streaming back. HDR is next on the menu, with Disney+ explaining that "We are working to restore it as quickly as we can but cannot yet confirm when it will become available again."

If you're a subscriber in one of the affected countries and HDR is a deal-breaker, Disney+ says that you can switch to a different, cheaper plan. If you want to stay on Premium but aren't happy with the loss of features, you can "request a partial refund for [your] current billing period by contacting Disney+." That only applies to direct subscribers; if you've subscribed via a third party, such as an App Store, you'll need to contact that company instead.

As I've written previously, removing the features wasn't something Disney+ chose to do; it was compelled to do it after a court case. Video and streaming patents are very complicated, and patent owners can be highly litigious, and we've seen a flurry of similar cases across the biggest multiple streamers in recent years. There's an old saying in the entertainment industry: where there's a hit, there's a writ.

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