For many, the prospect of opening your TV's picture settings menu is terrifying.
After all, featuring a long list of options, all of which have jargon-heavy labels and technical descriptions, it can be daunting, and it's easy to make things worse if you don't know what you're doing.
But that's where picture presets come into play.
While I urge new TV owners to avoid the dreaded "Vivid Mode" like the plague, these presets can usually get you most of the way to a top-notch picture experience, and traditionally our favourite has been Filmmaker Mode.
As the name suggests, this mode is intended to capture the creator's intent, meaning it turns off a lot of the processing that your TV adds on top, such as motion handling, contrast and colour enhancement, and sharpening.
For picture purists, such as ourselves, those settings are often worth avoiding anyway, and we've seen many prominent Hollywood figures such as Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, The Wolf of Wall Street), Denis Villeneuve (Blade Runner 2049, Dune), and Ross Duffer (creator of Stranger Things) advocate for the picture mode.
You may be surprised to hear that the technical specifications for what counts as a true Filmmaker Modearen't set by the companies making TVs and projectors. Instead, it's an independently managed certification.
As stated by the UHD Alliance, which oversees Filmmaker Mode, to achieve certification, you must meet these exact standards listed on the Filmmaker Mode website:
- Maintain source content frame rate & aspect ratio
- White Point: D65
- Motion Smoothing/Interpolation: OFF
- Overscan: Only if signaled with the image
- Sharpening: OFF
- TV Noise Reduction: OFF
- Other image “enhancement” processing: OFF
This means that when we're faced with a new TV, our first port of call is changing it into Filmmaker Mode (or its equivalent mode, more on that later), as it levels the playing field by dialling those settings right in. Even if Filmmaker Mode doesn't achieve a completely perfect picture, it gets us most of the way there, leaving us to tweak small things like motion or brightness.
Switching off all of the unneeded processing in one click of a button is very handy, and seeing a TV go from its out-of-the-box Standard (which is usually garish and over-smoothed) or Eco (often dull and dim) setting to something I'd actually want to watch is always a relief.
That being said, Filmmaker Mode isn't a fix-all solution, and I've noticed a shift in the last couple of years. Specifically, some manufacturers seem to be stepping away from it to prioritise their own picture processing modes.
Sony is a prime example of this; it's never had Filmmaker Mode on its TVs, instead opting to prioritise its own set of internal standards for matching picture performance to the creator's intent. As such, it includes a Professional Mode on its TVs instead.
More recently, and this is what sent me down this rabbit hole, is Philips opting to leave Filmmaker Mode off its 2026 TVs. I've just finished testing the OLED911 – stay posted for the review – and it swaps out Filmmaker Mode for a new Reference picture preset.
Philips assures me that the goal here is the same, although I did have to toggle a few settings to get the picture exactly where I liked it.
Its justification was that users were reportedly confused by the naming of Filmmaker Mode, thinking that it was a setting used if you were creating movies. I'm not sure how much I buy that, especially in a world where we can quickly whip out our phones to Google something like that, but it's an interesting change nonetheless.
That said, these companies each have their own approach to "authenticity", and it's not one that we can always verify. Settings are applied even though it's "reference" or "professional" mode; take the Philips OLED911, which applies an HDR upscaling system to SDR content. While it can look good, we certainly felt that it wasn't very authentic for a reference mode.
Filmmaker Mode is also having to face the reality of TV picture processing becoming not only quite good, but also integral to how these TVs work.
Samsung, Sony, LG, Philips, TCL and all the rest still have picture processing happening in the background even if you opt to switch everything off in the settings menu. Modern TVs need picture processing to function, and as such, these manufacturers have gotten quite good at implementing it.
Sony especially excels here with its XR Processor, which handles a huge array of picture processing elements at all times, including identifying the focal point of the image and applying depth mapping to create a superbly three-dimensional image, even with all of the relevant settings disabled in Professional mode.
I've also found that TV manufacturers are stepping up their game when it comes to the picture modes that they implement themselves. Samsung's Movie Mode, for example, is excellent on the OLED TVs we've tested recently, as it enriches the picture with more brightness and impact (provided you turn the motion processing way down), and Sony's Cinema Mode is a similar story.
That said, LG and Panasonic TVs seem to respond best to Filmmaker Mode; our cheat sheet with any LG OLED is to put it into Filmmaker Mode and change the motion setting to True Cinema for the best picture experience.
Ultimately, I hope that Filmmaker Mode is here to stay, as it's a seriously valuable tool for those intimidated by TV settings menus, and I hope to see it keep evolving with the times. Having an easily accessible and consistent launch point for all TVs with standardised settings makes things easier for everyone.
Getting the best out of your TV shouldn't be an uphill battle, and Filmmaker Mode is one of the best ways to level out and simplify that process. I'm a huge advocate for having transparent and consistent guidelines.
While Filmmaker Mode has changed and evolved to adapt to things like Dolby Vision and ambient light sensors, I hope that it continues to be featured on TVs and projectors for a long time to come.
MORE:
Read our full Samsung S99H review
Here are our picks for the best TVs
As well as the best OLED TVs
