UHD Alliance Lands Hisense Support for Filmmaker Mode Feature in TVs
Hisense will back Filmmaker Mode beginning with products shipping this year, UHD Alliance President Mike Fidler told a webinar his group sponsored Wednesday with the Digital Entertainment Group. Filmmaker Mode is the uniformly named ease-of-access TV picture setting free of the image processing that creators disdain for rendering their content in the living room as if it were shot on high-speed video rather than film (see 1908270001).
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
If your job depends on informed compliance, you need International Trade Today. Delivered every business day and available any time online, only International Trade Today helps you stay current on the increasingly complex international trade regulatory environment.
Filmmaker Mode bowed last summer with LG, Panasonic and Vizio TV-brand support. Kaleidescape, Samsung and TP Vision added their backing at CES (see 2001070034). The top five TV brands -- Hisense, LG, Samsung, TCL and Vizio -- control 79% of North American unit share, said Fidler, citing Omdia data. TCL, is a UHDA member, but not a Filmmaker Mode backer. TP Vision markets Philips-brand TVs in most world markets outside North America. Filmmaker Mode is available on Panasonic TVs sold in Europe. Panasonic exited the consumer TV business in North America, but still sells professional monitors here, said Joseph Cates, Panasonic Hollywood Lab general manager-business development.
COVID-19 “accelerated the existing trend” toward “a lot more cinematic content going straight to the home,” said UHDA Chairman Michael Zink, Warner Bros. vice president-technology. “We’ve seen a lot of very high-profile filmmakers create cinematic content” that goes directly to over-the-top services, he said. “With that really comes the need of making sure that you’re displaying that content while maintaining the creative intent.”
Most TV makers have opted to enable Filmmaker Mode activation in the TV through automatic switching, said Zink. Panasonic enables it through a button on the remote for TVs it sells in Europe. UHDA’s focus the past year has been on working with TV makers on getting Filmmaker Mode implemented, he said. “We have the devices out there, they’re just waiting for a signal” embedded in the OTT content to trigger automatic switching in a TV, he said. Zink saved the day's big announcement for the end of his presentation, flashing a slide with a quote attributed to Amazon, saying Prime Video will launch the Filmmaker Mode feature "on select players next year.” Amazon didn't respond to questions.
LG built Filmmaker Mode support across 40 new TV models for 2020, said Tim Alessi, senior director-product planning and marketing. "We kind of went all in on Filmmaker Mode," he said. "We want to highlight it at retail. We've incorporated a Filmmaker Mode callout in retail displays," including placements in "hundreds" of Best Buy stores that are headlined with the phrase, "See the Director's Vision," he said.
With Filmmaker Mode, "we got the entire industry to rally around one name and one set of settings that can be consistently communicated," said Alessi. "I've been working in the TV category for over 20 years, and I've never seen a case before where competitors in this business have agreed to use the same branding, logo and feature descriptions. I think we need to really take advantage of that. It really is quite remarkable that that happened."