I am quite tired of these kind of comments. FEL isn’t just marketing fluff… FEL contains corrections and refinements that the Base Layer + RPU alone can’t deliver. These refinements matter most in tricky scenes: bright highlights (like fireworks, reflections, stars), smooth color gradients (sunsets, skies), and dark areas where subtle details can get lost. With FEL, you get more texture, less banding, and fewer crushed shadows. Without it, those areas can look flatter or noisier. It’s unfortunate that we lose dual-layer FEL support on newer kernels, at least as we know today, since all FEL titles become MEL and hence deviate from the signal that studios mastered and encoded for a reason to give the best experience possible.
I am staying on an older kernel for now, at least for CE22, but I honestly think that most people will have a really hard time being able to distinct FEL from a high-end re-encode where FEL has been properly baked into the base layer with it’s refinements. I cannot say the same for FEL vs MEL for the same movie and I would probably argue with the same reasoning on the 1080p vs. 4K debate we had many years ago. FEL is the whole point of Dolby Vision Profile 7 discs and going from FEL to MEL downgrades the format and quality, plain and simple. Baking FEL into base layer on re-encode is the best shot if using newer kernels