Make sure your new TV is performing at its best

Regardless of which model or brand of TV you have purchased, the image can look a lot better if you make a few adjustments. This is because even the highest end TVs, when you first take them out of the box, will likely need some minor adjustments such as switching on or off certain performance features, color settings, or motion settings. The good news is, these tweaks are easy, and most of the time you have the good old handy reset feature if you’ve gone too far!

 

Why the standard TV settings may not always be the best..

 

The stock settings as applied by the factory are OK for that entire product line, but bear in mind that the manufacturers such as Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense, TCL or Panasonic are all competing with each other for that wow factor on the shop floor. When you walk into a retail store to find yourself a new TV, you are usually presented with an end to end wall of Big screen TVs all playing the same image. How does Samsung set itself apart from LG? How does TCL set itself apart from Hisense? Usually, what catches your attention in such displays is bright, vivid colors that pop out and seem much more vibrant than the rest. But is this always a good thing? It certainly is a good thing for catching your attention, but it may not be such a good thing when you turn the TV on at home with the same settings and find the picture to be so over-overpoweringly bright that it no longer looks natural and is actually hard to watch.

Even just changing the picture mode can make a huge difference. It’s worth learning about the different options and why they’re important so you can get the most out of your new purchase. Most TVs have an initial automatic setup process where you are prompted to connect to Wi-Fi, download software updates and agree to license and privacy notices, but after that you’re on your own. Here’s what to consider next.

After running through the TV’s initial setup process, you will want to choose the best picture mode for everyday viewing.  By every day viewing, we refer to watching the news, watching your soaps or reality TV shows. Images where usually there is not a lot of animated or CGI imagery, rather images of people. For this type of viewing, a more natural toned down image would be better suited, as skin tones can easily appear too red or too bright if watching say a news presenter while in Vivid mode.

These options are found in the TV’s picture settings, under the settings menu, and then by looking for options such as picture mode, expert settings or similar. Even if you don’t want to adjust anything else, selecting the right picture mode will go a long way in getting your TV to look its best. A general tip to be aware of is that the TV will most likely produce its most natural (in other words, most realistic) picture in its Movie or Cinema picture mode. The picture will appear brighter and a lot more vivid in its Sports mode or obviously it’s Vivid mode.

While there is no right or wrong way to set up the picture, as every person has their own preference of how they like the picture to look, it is generally recommended that you adjust the picture settings while viewing images of a person on screen, so you can make adjustments according to skin tone, which is probably the hardest thing to accurately reproduce naturally. To make animated images look bright and vivid is very easy, but if you get the skin tones right without too much saturation then you will find it easy to adjust the other settings around that.

 

Picture Mode

Almost every TV has a selection of preset picture mode settings to choose from, with different options such as cinema (or ‘movie’ on some models), dynamic, standard, sports, gaming and more. Flicking through these options will change the picture dramatically as you cycle between them.

What these presets are doing, is basically adjusting the color temperature, the backlight, motion enhancer, the gamma and edge enhancement or sharpness. A lot of TVs may be automatically set to a ‘standard’ mode, which gives you a mid point balance between these metrics we’ve just mentioned. While this might be suitable for everyday viewing, there are other presets such as cinema or movie mode that will be better suited for more accurate color reproduction –  meaning it makes the image look as close as to what the director intended it to look like.

Let’s look at some of the most popular settings.

Cinema/Movie: This setting is the easiest way to give you a natural, accurate picture, as the colors are reproduced in a softer way,  but also offers “blacker blacks” and “whiter whites” for an overall better color presentation. This works especially well in darker rooms. It uses the least amount of backlight of all the picture presets, so your black levels are optimal in this mode. However, if you watch TV more during the day or in an extremely bright room, you may find that another preset might be better suited.

When to use it: We suggest keeping your TV on cinema all the time as this results in the most “accurate” look, but especially use this setting when watching movies or in darker lighting conditions.

Standard: This is most likely the default setting that you have on your TV when you take it out of the box. The images have a bluish hue, and the contrast, sharpness and brightness are set in the middle. It’s great for normal, everyday TV, but we probably suggest against using the Standard setting if you’re watching higher quality images such as a movie, and prefer a more cinematic feel.

When to use it: Normal, everyday watching. This mode is best used during the day in average lighting conditions.

Dynamic/Vivid: This mode makes the colors really stand out, increasing the saturation to exaggerate the contrast. It is regarded as the least realistic picture mode. One downside is that this can make images look over-saturated, and unnatural. It can look great for certain animated content, though.  Dynamic is the exact opposite of Cinema mode, and rather than producing a warm/reddish hue, it’s more of a cold/blue hue which can make the image look unnaturally bright.

When to use it: Like we mentioned at the beginning of this article, this setting can be useful in a retail store environment, where the bright, vivid image can make the TV really stand out. The setting makes the images “pop” and catches the eye better than the other softer settings. We don’t suggest using it for in-home purposes, though, unless you are in a very brightly lit room and need the exaggerated brightness levels.

Natural: Unlike the name suggests, this mode can often produce a very unnatural look, due to it’s high brightness settings and vivid colors. It is not taken to quite the same extent as the Vivid setting, but is definitely not as natural as it’s name might suggest!

When to use it: Similarly to the vivid picture mode, natural mode is often used for display TV’s because it is bright and draws the eye in.

Sports: As the name obviously suggests, you would consider using Sports mode for watching any sports events. While it does artificially boosts the colors and contrast, maybe not to the extent of the Vivid setting but still can be a little glaring, this mode isn’t so much all about the color display as it is about offering a higher level of motion interpolation (smoothness of motion) to prevent motion blur. Some TVs sports modes, such as some Samsung TVs, calibrate audio settings to better recreate the sound of a stadium, too.

When to use it: When watching sporting events or when trying to overcome a dimly lit room.

Gaming: If you want to improve your gaming experience, then opting for game mode may be your best option. This mode works by getting rid of all video processing features to make room for a faster display response, while increasing the color and contrast to make in-engine graphics look brighter and more colorful. The images can seem more “washed out”, because settings like contrast, sharpness and brightness are sacrificed in favor of lag reduction (i.e. faster response time).

When to use it: When playing video games or watching animated movies.

Picture Settings

Dynamic Contrast: Sometimes called “Contrast Enhancer,” this increases the darkness in dark areas, and increases the brightness in the brighter areas. As it’s name suggests, it may make the contrast between the darker and brighter areas pop out more, but in doing so reduces the detail in the blacks and whites. It can also introduce color banding artifacts.

Suggestion: Turn this off and you’ll ensure you’re getting the maximum amount of detail in the picture.

Black Tone: Just like the Dynamic Contrast setting does, this attempts to make the black areas darker. But because you can’t actually make the darkest blacks any blacker than they already are, as they are the areas where the pixel is actually not allowing any light in, instead, what this setting will do is make the dark gray areas black instead. This causes you to lose overall detail in that area.

Suggestion: It’s best to leave this off.

Black Detail: The opposite of Black Tone. The processing of this feature attempts to enhance the detail in darker areas by brightening them, but usually it just causes the opposite. By increasing brightness in areas which are meant to be black, you’re more likely to introduce a washed out look.

Edge Enhancement: This feature attempts to make the image look a little more defined by increasing the sharpness around the edges of the images on screen. That sounds good, and in some situations may have the desired effect, but introducing too much sharpness can sometimes create a “halo effect” around edges.

Suggestion: Sometimes this setting can work well if you are not too close to the screen. The closer you are, or the higher you set this feature at, the more you will notice the jagged edges or the halo effect, so start at zero and slowly work your way up while sitting at the distance you would normally watch TV from. As soon as you start to see jagged edges form, back off the setting a bit.

Live Color & HDR+ Mode: These are all processing features designed to enhance the colors in some form. Live color introduces color saturation, while HDR mode attempts to make non-HDR content look more like HDR content, in the same way a TV might upscale non HD resolution to HD resolution. These all result in an artificial result compared to how the original content was mastered, so having these features disabled will provide the most natural image.

Noise Reduction: Other names for this type of processing may be Digital Clean View, Super Resolution, Reality Creation, or Smooth Gradation. These attempt to make low-quality content look better, usually by increasing sharpness and removing noise and other artifacts caused by digital compression or analog conversion.If you are watching high quality content, this can degrade the picture due to unnecessary extra processing.

Suggestion: For high-quality content, like Blu-rays or 4k streaming, these features are best left off, since they can soften the picture. You may want to turn them on for old DVDs, or Foxtel standard definition channels if you find that it looks better.

Motion Interpolation: Every manufacturer has its own name for this. Sony calls it Motionflow, Samsung calls it Auto Motion Plus and it’s called TruMotion on LG TVs. They are all designed to do essentially the same thing, and achieve it in a very similar way, introduce more frames in between the already existing frames, in an attempt to produce super-smooth motion. This is what causes that that strange uneasy, unnatural movement that so many people hate, and it can also introduce artifacts and noise because it is adding information that was not meant to be there.

Suggestion: This one is a personal preference. Some people like it and don’t find it uneasy to watch with it on. But we recommend disabling it if you are finding the picture has that “Soap-Opera” effect which is almost nauseating to watch.

Backlight: Most TVs have both a Backlight and a Brightness setting, which do very different things. While “Brightness” affects the black levels, Backlight changes how bright your TV is. You most likely would want it higher during the day, and lower if you’re watching in a dark room. Some TVs may have an Energy Saving feature that attempts to adjust the backlight automatically, so look out for that if you are finding that the backlight is adjusting on its own and not to your preference.

HDMI Range: Can also be known as Color Space, RGB Range or Black Level. This feature determines how the color signals sent to your TV are processed. Make sure the devices plugged into your TV, like your game console or set-top box, are set to “Limited.” “Full” is intended only for those who are using their TV as a PC monitor. If your TV lets you set this to Auto, leave it there. Otherwise, it should almost always be set to “Limited”or “Low”

24p Playback: Sometimes known as Real Cinema or Film Mode, this feature plays movies at 24 frames per second instead of 30 frames per second, which may remove some stutter when watching movies and TV. Some TVs do this automatically without having to look for a feature to turn on or off, and some can’t do it at all. But if this setting exists, you’ll want to turn it on.

Local Dimming: This processing works by dimming some of the LED lights in your TV to achieve darker blacks in certain parts of the picture. On certain TVs, this feature can be great. On other TVs it can lag behind the picture, or cause too much loss in detail in dark areas, or some flickering. Try this both on and off to see how your set performs and which you prefer.