What just happened? Following the announcement of the feature last year, Filmmaker Mode, which automatically disables any post-processing a TV may have, is coming to more manufacturers' sets. Joining LG, Panasonic, and Vizio in supporting the mode will be Samsung, Philips/TP Vision, and Kaleidescape.
Filmmaker Mode was originally announced last August by the UHD Alliance. It's intended to provide a more cinematic experience on 4K and 8K TVs, which often have motion smoothing, or whatever the manufacturer decides to call it, enabled by default.
Motion smoothing, which has been criticized by many within the film industry, involves the creation of artificial frames that are inserted between real frames to make action scenes look more fluid and counter motion blur. While this can improve certain content such as sports, it looks strange on 24fps movies, leading to what's called the soap opera effect. Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible - Fallout director Christopher McQuarrie are just two of the industry names who have spoken out against motion smoothing.
Variety writes that Filmmaker Mode, which also disables post-processing systems such as noise reduction and sharpening, will be part of every new 4K and 8K TV that LG introduces in 2020, while Panasonic said its 2020 OLED HD 2000 series will support the mode. No word yet on which Samsung, TP Vision, and Kaleidescape TVs will have the feature.
While more companies are joining the initiative, Sony and TCL have been conspicuously quiet about embracing Filmmaker Mode.
The UHD Alliance wants Filmmaker Mode enabled by default, and it's also standardizing the mode across TVs to make it easy to find in the menus.