LOS ANGELES—Owners of future advanced TVs may one day forget the all too familiar disclaimer before movies—“This film has been modified from its original version...”—at least if the UHD Alliance, CE manufacturers, Hollywood studios and filmmakers have anything to do with it.

The group today announced a collaboration to equip advanced televisions with “Filmmaker Mode,” a cinematic viewing option that promises to one day make such a disclaimer a thing of the past.

“Modern televisions have extraordinary technical capabilities, and it is important that we harness these new technologies to ensure that the home viewer sees our work presented as closely as possible to our original creative intentions,” said Christopher Nolan, the director of “Dunkirk,” “Interstellar” and the “Dark Knight Trilogy.”

“Through collaboration with TV manufacturers, Filmmaker Mode consolidates input from filmmakers into simple principles for respecting frame rate, aspect ratio, color and contrast and encoding in the actual media so that televisions can read it and can display it appropriately.”

Just as various viewing modes available on today’s TVs leverage the digital smarts built into sets to enhance viewing a variety of content ranging from sports to video games, Filmmaker Mode will make it possible for viewers to have an experience that more closely emulates what they have in a theater. The new mode will disable all post-processing, such as motion smoothing, so a UHD TV displays what a filmmaker intended, preserving the correct aspect ratio, colors and frame rates.

LG Electronics, Panasonic and VIZIO will support Filmmaker Mode; however, specific products and rollout plans will be announced at a later date, the UHD Alliance said.

This isn’t the first time Hollywood and CE manufacturers have collaborated on new technologies and experiences for consumers, but it is the first to include leaders from the creative community, the alliance noted.

Filmmaker Mode will be easy for viewers to access. Rather than drilling down through multiple menu selections, consumers can access the mode through a single button push or automatically via metadata embedded in content, according to the alliance. To make it easier for consumers to find, the Filmmaker Mode function name and settings will be consistent from multiple TV manufacturers.

The UHD Alliance’s role in Filmmaker Mode has extended beyond consolidating feedback from filmmakers, studios and CE manufacturers to include polling its members to identify priorities. The alliance also solicited input from the Directors Guild of America and The Film Foundation as part of specification development.

“When Paul Thomas Anderson, Ryan Coogler, Patty Jenkins, Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan reached out to the UHDA about extending the cinematic experience into the living room, we were eager and ideally situated to engage in the conversation,” said UHD Alliance Chairman, Michael Zink of Warner Bros.

Hear from Nolan, Scorsese and more of the industry’s top directors on what Filmmaker Mode will offer in the below video.

FREMONT, CALIF.—The UHD Alliance has released details on its Mobile HDR Premium for portable devices, including its logo and specifications. The Mobile HDR Premium is designed to confirm that a device meets the group’s defined performance criteria for resolution, dynamic range, color space and bit depth.

TVT’s sister publication TWICE has the full story.

FREMONT, CALIF.—The UHD Alliance (UHDA) has developed performance criteria that battery-powered devices such as smartphones, tablets and laptops must meet to deliver what the group calls a premium video experience, the group announced at CES.

Through its current Ultra HD Premium certification program, the alliance certifies 4K TVs, 4K Blu-ray players, and content masters as delivering a premium experience. For consumer TVs, the criteria include minimum 4K resolution along with minimum requirements for bit depth, dynamic range, and color gamut.

“The continued and growing demand for video on portable devices makes the category a key component of the rapidly expanding Ultra HD ecosystem,” the group said. 

Though the alliance didn’t reveal details of its mobile-device criteria at CES, it did say the requirements will likely be unveiled at the Mobile World Congress, which runs from Feb. 27 through March 2 in Barcelona, Spain.

As with TV criteria, the alliance will specify different dynamic ranges for OLED and LCD displays, given their different performance capabilities, said Dan Schinasi, Samsung’s product planning director and chairman of the alliance’s promotion working group. He declined further comment on the criteria, including whether 4K displays would be required.

During MWC, the alliance also expects to reveal a mobile-device certification logo and the testing equipment and methodology that will be used to certify the products. Mobile-device companies might also unveil the first products designed to comply with the new criteria, he said.

“We didn’t set the bar where [mobile-device] quality is today,” Schinasi said. “I’m not aware of anything today that could meet the requirements.” He added that he expects certified devices to be available “in the very near future.”

At last year’s CES, the alliance unveiled criteria for TVs, content masters and a single content-distribution channel, the physical 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray disc. It later unveiled criteria for 4K Blu-ray players. The group hasn’t yet set criteria for such distribution channels as pay-TV broadcasts, free over-air TV broadcasts, or streaming services to TVs or to mobile devices.

The alliance also said it is working on “strengthening audio requirements for devices, content and distribution.” When it unveiled its requirements a year ago, the alliance said its technical specifications “recommend support for next-generation audio,” but the group did not make mandatory any advanced-audio formats such as object-based surround sound.

Separately, the alliance announced that it has grown to more than 50 members from about 10 at its CES 2015 debut. Members are from the content-creation, content-distribution, CE and chip-making industries and include Samsung, LG, Sony, Fox, Warner, Universal, Disney, Netflix, Amazon, Dolby, DTS, Technicolor, Panasonic, Hisense, Toshiba, Oppo, Microsoft, Philips, TP Vision, TCL, Amazon, Nanosys, and chip makers Intel and MStar.

This story first appeared on TVT's sister publication TWICE. 

NORTH HOLLYWOOD, CALIF.—The UHD Alliance has set BluFocus as the first UHDA Approved Test Center for conducting UHD display performance testing. The testing and certification company will ensure that UHD displays meet the standards and performance requirements detailed in the UHDA Test Specifications before they can carry the UHDA logo.

To appropriately test UHD displays, BluFocus has chosen the Photo Research Inc. SpectraScan Spectroradiometer PR-740 as its primary testing tool. It will also use the Astrodesign Inc. VG-876 signal generator to test that patterns are displayed correctly and appropriate metadata is sent to the displays under test.

BluFocus is a testing, certification and advisory service specialist for the home entertainment industry located in North Hollywood, Calif.

The UHD Alliance is a coalition of film studios, consumer electronic manufacturers, content distributors and technology companies that promotes the next-generation of in-home entertainment platforms, including 4K, HDR, wide color gamut, high frame rate and immersive audio.

FREMONT, CALIF.—“Ultra high definition” has been defined. The UHD Alliance this week released specifications for UHD, along with a logo identifying devices capable of displaying Ultra HD content.

The Alliance developed three specs that cover devices, distribution and content. All three require a resolution of at least 3840x2160 (not quite 4KTV); 10-bit color depth, BT.2020 color gamut and high dynamic range according to SMPTE ST 2084 EOTF.

There are two HDR spec options for displays: A combination of peak brightness and black level of either more than 1,000 nits peak brightness and less than 0.05 nits black level, or more than 540 nits peak brightness and less than 0.0005 nits black level. Devices also must display more than 90 percent of P3 colors to meet the requirements for the UHD Alliance logo. With regard to mastering, 100 percent of P3 colors must be displayed, and HDR is set at more than 1,000 nits brightness and less than 0.03 nits black level.

The specs focus on image quality and make no specific recommendation for immersive audio.

The year-old Alliance, comprised of 35 member companies (listed below), said that it has designated “multiple, independent centers around the globe to handle testing” to ensure compliance with the specs.

The UHDA specs and the associated licensing terms are available from the organization.

UHDA Member Companies
DirecTV
Dolby Laboratories
LG Electronics
Netflix
Panasonic
Samsung Electronics
Sony
Technicolor
The Walt Disney Studios
Twentieth Century Fox
Universal Pictures
Warner Bros. Entertainment
Amazon
ARRI
Dreamworks
DTS
Fraunhofer Gesellschaft
Hisense
HiSilicon Technologies
Intel
Koninklijke Philips N.V.
MStar Semiconductor
Nanosys Inc.
Novatek
NVIDIA
Orange
Realtek Semiconductor
Rogers Communications
Sharp
Shenzhen TCL New Technology
Sky U.K.
THX
Toshiba
TP Vision Europe B.V.

PARIS—Last week the UHD Alliance announced the completion of specifications for UHD displays and content. Now, Technicolor has revealed its new services that allow them to accelerate content production that is in compliance with those specifications.

Among the new services that Technicolor is offering is to utilize Technicolor colorists and color scientists to natively grade content in HDR. Technicolor also has announced new remastering services with its Intelligent Tone Management plug-in for major color grading to create HDR content from archived content. Technicolor’s Home Entertainment Services was also recently fully certified by the Blu-ray Disc Association to create 4K HDR UHD Blu-ray discs.

Technicolor is a founding member of the UHD Alliance.