Applications using AndroidX Media3 Exoplayer may encounter an issue when playing MPEG-DASH manifest that contain both Dolby Vision streams and SDR fallback streams. Under certain conditions, Dolby Vision-enabled devices may incorrectly select the SDR stream instead of the available Dolby Vision stream.

The problem is observed when:

• an MPEG-DASH manifest contains both:
  • Dolby Vision representations, and
  • SDR fallback representations
• playback is performed using Media3 Exoplayer version 1.11.1 and earlier
• playback is performed on Dolby Vision enabled device

NOTE: The issue may affect playback of all Dolby Vision profiles.

The issue does not occur when:

• the manifest contains only Dolby Vision representations
• no SDR fallback video stream is present

On affected devices, playback may not behave as expected when an MPEG-DASH manifest contains both Dolby Vision and SDR fallback representations. Even though the device supports Dolby Vision and a Dolby Vision stream is available in the manifest, Media3 Exoplayer may select SDR representation instead. Since playback succeeds without generating errors, the issue may go unnoticed during functional testing. However, affected viewers receive an SDR presentation instead of Dolby Vision, preventing delivery of the intended premium viewing experience.

The issue has been addressed in the AndroidX Media3 main branch through the changes introduced in https://github.com/androidx/media/pull/3344

The fix is not yet available in a public AndroidX Media3 release and is expected to be included in a future version.