The TV picture is so dark that you can hardly see anything? And the sky in the feature film is suddenly green? Then the TV has the wrong picture settings. TECHBOOK shows how to set up the TV correctly.
The new television is finally in the living room – and the first disillusionment follows: the colors are too bright, the contrast too high and the picture seems somehow overloaded. Why actually? In fact, the picture on most televisions is set at the factory to be as spectacular as possible on display in the shop, in bright lighting conditions. The living room at home, on the other hand, has a completely different light, here the preset images often seem far too overdriven. TECHBOOK shows tips and tricks on how to set up the TV correctly and get the best out of your TV picture.
Choose the right picture modes
Have you ever checked the picture settings on your TV? So that you don’t have to fiddle with every controller, there are numerous presets with names like “Movie”, “Lively” or “Dynamics”. Feel free to try out a few settings in different daylight: in the evening when there is little light in the room, modes such as “Cinema”, “Cinema” or “Film” are ideal. On the other hand, if it is very bright in the room in summer and the sun shines through the window onto the TV screen, you should choose brighter settings, which often have names like “Dynamic” or “Football”.
If you want to completely do without picture enhancers, you should choose a picture mode called “Gaming”, which some televisions offer. All filters and functions are switched off here so that gamers do not have any delays in the display caused by the calculation of the image. This can bring a decisive advantage, especially in shooter and racing games.
Turn down the sharpness for a good TV picture
If you turn up the sharpness settings on a television, do you automatically get a sharper picture? A fallacy! The sharpness setting creates an optical glow around the edges, which makes the TV picture appear clearer – but at the expense of details. So feel free to turn the sharpness control down a little. TECHBOOK has put together more information about the sharpness problem in televisions for you in this article.
How to correct incorrect colors
The sky in the film looks more green than blue? Then something is wrong with the so-called color temperature. This determines the general white tone of the display: If this does not match, there will be unsightly color casts that make the image appear warmer or cooler. The color temperature can be corrected in the settings, as can the color saturation. Here, a picture of a face is very useful for setting: if it looks like it has a terrible sunburn, adjust it until it looks natural.
Modern devices with 4K also often offer an HDR function. Above all, this should deliver high-contrast and plastic images. But this function also has its limits. Turn off HDR and see for yourself how you like it better.
Don’t forget brightness and contrast
Even if it sounds paradoxical at first: The brightness on the television regulates the darkness of the black areas in the picture, while the contrast regulates the white level. Incorrect settings ensure, for example, that hardly anything can be seen in dark night scenes or that bright scenes shine too brightly.
The best way to optimize is to find an image with lots of detail and shading that contains both light and dark parts of the image. Tip: First set the contrast control to the highest level and then lower it bit by bit so that all the subtleties and different shades of gray can just be seen. Use the same trick for the brightness.
Burosch test patterns help with TV picture optimization
To make it easier to calibrate the TV image, it is worth downloading a test image as a reference, for example. These contain a variety of colors and different shades of gray or even images of human faces. Free test images are available for download at Burosch. Download the file, save it on the computer on a USB stick or an SD card and insert it into the receiver or into a Blu-ray player – but not into the television, as Burosch advises. There, an incorrect color space is activated for video playback. Now you can open the test image and start optimizing for your perfect TV picture. At first glance, this may seem a bit tedious, but it is definitely worth it!