Sony’s Creator Callibrated could be a home theater game-changer

The ideal home viewing experience is one that recreates the power of a theater while adhering to any specific vision of the filmmakers, producing a faithful, immersive experience in your living room. It’s not particularly easy to do.

Sony has been leading the charge to bring the cinematic experience home. For years, the company has been innovating ways to make that experience not only a reality, but also a convenience. Its latest project is called Creator Calibrated, and the intention is to work with filmmakers so that Smart TVs will automatically adjust to the specific content on screen, and not just the genre or style. By optimizing color, contrast, motion, and other settings, while getting the approval of those involved in making the film or show, aims to bring fidelity to the screen.

The Creator Calibrated feature is yet to be fully realized, but it’s something Sony has expressed interest in, and it’s the next logical step in efforts the company has been making for years. So here’s how it started and how it’s going as Sony pushes the envelope for what TVs can do.

Netflix

First came Netflix Calibrated

Sony worked with the streaming giant to optimize in-house content

In 2018, Sony introduced Netflix Calibrated mode on its Android TV platform (and later Google TV). Sony’s partnership with the streaming giant led to the development of a preset design to be used when watching anything on Netflix. At the time, Netflix had a lot less compensation, so the collaboration made a lot of sense: Disney+ hadn’t yet launched and HBO Now was still a thing.

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Netflix Calibrated is a group of presets that can be turned on prior to watching Netflix; it differs from cinematic modes, which use metadata on specific content being viewed to alter settings.

The preset is aimed at preserving creative intent and optimizing the viewing experience for Netflix-made content. It may not do much for watching reruns of The Office, but it does improve the visual quality of more dynamic shows, such as Stranger Things, Lost in Space, or Wednesday. Any original Netflix titles, especially those that rely heavily on darkness, colors, and motion to convey story, are improved by this preset.

Sony

Then came Bravia Core Calibrated

A new preset for Sony’s service

When Sony calibrated settings for Netflix’s catalog, it made sense for the company to do it for its own streaming service, BRAVIA CORE. The platform is populated by Sony Pictures content, including a range of blockbusters such as Spider-Man, Jumanji, and Ghostbusters.

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With Bravia Core Calibrated, Sony aimed to bring the IMAX experience to the home theater. The preset adjusts content filmed for IMAX by adding more color and brightness to the screen while providing immersive sound. Unlike Netflix Calibrated, which called for viewers to switch the setting on before viewing, Bravia Core Calibrated automatically initiates whenever IMAX Enhanced content is watched on the service.

What about Filmmaker Mode?

Top TVs offer Filmmaker Mode for fidelity

UHD Alliance’s Filmmaker Mode came about a few years ago in a similar attempt to recreate what a movie’s creators wanted you to see. This initiative was not led by Sony, however, but instead a group of filmmakers and studios who were more or less annoyed at all the post-processing done by Smart TVs that ultimately neutered the quality of the content. That processing can be very helpful for older content, but it doesn’t help when you’re watching a movie made with intent and integrity by a group of dedicated individuals.

As a result, Filmmaker Mode doesn’t so much turn on settings as it does turn a bunch of things off. It negates motion smoothing, sharpening, noise reduction, and any other supposed enhancements. It also maintains the aspect ratio, frame rate, color, and contrast of the original source.

The setting is a boon for plenty of creative content, particularly by award-winning directors and auteurs who have a specific vision for their content. It’s also going to be useful for any movie that has a lot of dark scenes, especially horror films. Not being able to see what’s going on in a given scene is scary, just not how the director wanted you to be scared.

The future is Creator Calibrated

Sony’s next step is ambitious

In lieu of blanket settings for a specific genre or platform, Sony wants its TVs to automatically adjust to the specific piece of content you’re watching. It is not available yet, and likely won’t be for years, if at all, but the goal is an ambitious marker and something content consumers should be rooting for.

Creator Calibrated aims to infuse each show and film with specific content by a creative involved, such as the director, cinematographer, or studio. Such an innovation would mean that Sony TVs are the gateway to view films exactly as they are intended by the filmmaker: nothing is getting in between the creator and the consumer. It’s essentially Denis Villeneauve coming to your help to set up your TV, so you can watch Dune 2.

The specific execution of such a program would require a lot of work on behalf of a lot of parties, but the intent positions Sony as the brand for filmmakers to support and film aficionados to patronize.

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Sony aims to do so with mini-LED screens, which is the latest attempt to rival the contrast achieved by OLED screens without actually having individually-controlled pixels. Mini-LED TVs create small zones that can be dimmed as needed while still fostering the incredible brightness and color associated with LED screens.

All of this work by Sony and others is done with authenticity in mind, and it can be a hard concept to grasp unless you see the difference firsthand. An understanding and appreciation of such fidelity only comes with seeing how things were and how things can be. It’s easy to not realize your TV or screen is lacking until you see something better: it’s exactly how I feel every time I look at a new TV.

I think that the content quality I’m consuming is pretty good, until I realize it can be so much better, at which point I can’t go back (and spoiler, you probably won’t be either).