Once you’ve got your spanking new TV (LCD or plasma) how do you get the best picture? The ideal settings for home are often very different to the manufacturers’ defaults, which are often adjusted for the harsh lighting of a showroom. By setting the picture correctly, you may well save both your money, and the planet by consuming less energy. Read on…
Start by writing-down the default settings. Beware that with some TVs (certainly with my Sony KDL-40V3000) there is the option to adjust picture settings either for the channel you are watching, or for every channel in one go. I suggest that you adjust for each source separately (TV, XBox, PS3, etc)
1) Set brightness (black level)
Brightness is a little misleading, and it may be clearer to think of this as black level. Use a scene from a film or game with plenty of shadow areas, and set black level (brightness) until you can just see all the shadow detail without making the blacks turn white.
2) Set contrast (white level)
Secondly, find a bright scene and adjust the contrast (white level) until the picture is comfortably bright enough without the picture being ‘washed out’.
Return to the dark scene and recheck. If necessary, re-adjust this, before returning to the bright scene to check this again. After a couple of tries you should find a satisfactory balance.
With an LCD, and depending on the model, you may find it difficult to get good black levels without ‘washing out’ picture or vice-versa, and you may have to compromise. How high you set your white and black levels simultaneously is related to the contrast ratio of your TV.
3) Set colour (saturation)
A good picture to use would be someone’s face, in a scene shot in natural light. Adjust the colour so that skin tones look natural. Sometimes a TV offers various colour temperature settings (e.g. cool, warm, neutral). Cool may produce a blue caste, with warm producing a red cast. Neutral is often be the correct setting.
As for all the other picture enhancing features, my motto is that “you can’t polish a turd”. Charming though it is, it’s grounded in good science. The panel its self has a certain capability, and it’s rare that clever settings actually improve the picture. Start with them off, and see if any improve the picture.
In my experience settings regarding the basics like colour, brightness and contrast tend to be less useful than things like MPEG noise removal, etc. Suck it and see.
Use a calibration DVD?
If you want to be more scientific about it, I suggest using a proper calibration DVD. I have used The AVIA Guide to Home Theater for many years, and find it to be very quick and easy. It even comes with funky little colour filters to look through at the test patterns, when setting colour.
This DVD is avilalbe from Amazon here
The Sony KDL-40V3000 is available from Amazon here.
Hope this has been helpful?
