LG is coming with a software update for its televisions so that users have the option to have their device automatically turn on movie maker mode with Prime Video streaming content that supports it. This will only come to models from 2020 and 2021 for the time being.
LG says it will start releasing the necessary update this week. First, the update will arrive with this year’s compatible models. The update comes to LG’s various 4k and 8k models that came out in 2020 and 2021. It concerns televisions that run on webOS 5.0 or 6.0. It’s unknown if this automatic movie maker mode option will also come to the C9 at a later date, for example; that’s a 2019 LG OLED TV.
The option to manually switch to the movie maker mode has been available for some time on several relatively new models and that also applies to televisions from other brands, but the option to have the television switch to this automatically was not available until now. LG and Amazon say they are the first to take this step.
It works by including a signal in the metadata of the Prime Video content to be played. After the update, the television will recognize that signal and be able to automatically switch on the movie maker mode. Thus, users do not need to take any additional steps for this mode, even though they have option to confirm or deny the automatic activation; this is done via a pop-up window that appears. As soon as this is confirmed, it is still possible to manually switch the mode off again in the settings of the television.
It is not made clear whether all Prime Video content will immediately receive support for the signal based on which the televisions can switch on the mode. It is also possible that in the beginning only part of the content will offer support for this, after which it is gradually expanded.
The movie maker mode was created after lobbying from Hollywood. Quite a few famous directors want their films to be viewed the way they intended. Filmmaker mode responds to this by disabling custom colors, additional frames from image interpolation, aspect ratios, sharpening, and other image enhancement techniques. LG previously indicated that the mode in SDR leads to a brightness of 100cd/m² and a gamma value of 2.4.