So you’ve just plugged in and turned on your brand-new TV, but you’re disappointed in the quality of its picture. Don’t reconsider the salesperson’s pitch to send a technician to your home. That’ll cost you at least a couple hundred bucks. We’ll show you how to calibrate your TV to get the best picture it’s capable of, and some of our recommendations won’t cost anything more than your time.
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Free Tv Calibration Disc
Before we get started, know that the vast majority of TVs now come from the factory set quite accurately. Choose the “home” option at first setup and you might be perfectly happy with the image quality. If that’s the case, spend your time watching a great movie instead of fiddling with the TV’s controls. But if you’d like to milk the last couple percent of image quality from your TV, we’ll guide you through the process. Just Just don’t expect your $500 TV to all of a sudden look like it has quantum dots or OLEDs onboard.
High dynamic range (HDR) is the newest feature to come to HDTVs. Just in case all the work the content providers and vendors have done to make HDR self-calibrating doesn’t suit your taste, these same methods can be used on some HDR TVs. Others will lock you out.
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Basic Adjustments
Download hcfr for free. Free Video Projector/Monitor Calibration Software. Video Projector/Monitor Calibration Software orginally developed as ColorHCFR. This code base is based off version 2.1 and will aim for a more open development process. Improve Your HDTV Picture Quality in 4 Easy Steps. Try these four quick tricks to get a better picture on the TV you already have. You can burn a copy of the AVSHD 709 Calibration disc from. Confession: Until a few days ago, I'd never calibrated my TV. There are a couple reasons for this. First, and most simply, I'm not down with buying a calibration disc that I will likely use once.
You could also call this step rudimentary calibration. It shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes, and all you need is a few test images and your eyes. You can also use a meter, but that’s for later. So grab your remote, head to the picture settings and read on about the various things you might need to adjust. We’ll get to the finer points and true calibration in a bit.
Brightness: This is actually nothing like what you do with a common household dimmer switch; it’s a black level control, i.e., what level of brightness (or lack thereof) is considered absolute black. Increase the value to raise it, decrease the value to lower it. Visually, it seems to have much the same effect as a dimmer, but there’s a subtle difference as you’ll see when we discuss contrast.
Contrast: Again, this doesn’t really adjust contrast—i.e., the difference between adjoining light and dark areas—it changes the white level, or what hue is considered absolute white. So, brightness = black level, contrast = white level, and the difference between the two is your actual contrast level. That’s why it’s a good idea to revisit brightness after you adjust contrast, and vice versa.
The image below, also from THX, provides a good contrast test pattern. If you can clearly see all eight gray rectangles, your contrast is fine.
Backlight: Now this is a brightness control, but it only applies to LCD TVs or other types that use a separate source for luminance. OLEDs don’t have this because the light source is the diode itself—not a light shining through it. Increasing the strength or luminance of a backlight will result in a brighter picture, but it will also increase bleed around the edges of a TV as well as from the LCDs themselves (which are not perfect shutters).
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On some TVs, you can almost completely wash out the colors by increasing the intensity of the backlight. Don’t do that. Generally speaking, leave the backlight as low as possible for the ambient light conditions. You might also want to turn off adaptive brightness, which changes the strength of the backlight according to said ambient lighting. When left on, it will temporarily undo any adjustments you make to backlight intensity.
Color: This TV term actually sits closer to its mundane meaning, but refers to the intensity of color, or in industry-speak—saturation. That’s not the hue or RGB makeup of them—that’s in the fine settings we’ll cover later. Turn this up too high, and the colors overwhelm the details. Too low, and voila! You have a black-and-white TV. Now if you want to de-colorize old movies, just turn the color all the way down.
Saturation settings are easily done by eyeball. When you start to notice detail declining, you have just more than enough color. We recommend using an episode of The Simpsons for testing. In practical terms, when Bart Simpson’s skin color starts obscuring his outline, you’ve gone too far.
Tint: On some older sets, this might be called Hue. Originally designed to correct phase errors in communications between TV tuners and broadcasts, it modifies the proportion of red or green in each non-black color. The odds of your having to adjust this these days are negligible, but if your favorite star’s face is looking a little green around the gills, use the tint setting as the stomach remedy.
Plasma Tv Calibration Disc
Sharpness: This is the level of perceived detail and the sharpness of edges that you’ll see in an image. These days it basically adjusts the anti-aliasing algorithm used by the TV’s image processor. Too much and you’ll see jagged, confused edges; too little and detail gets muddy. This is all according to taste, but TVs generally ship adjusted to “mild cheddar;” that is, a level that most everyone will find acceptable. We tend to tweak it slightly sharper, though this can lead to moire, shimmer, and an accentuation of any motion artifacts your TV exhibits.
Motion: This is an adjustment that, like sharpness, involves a trade-off. In this case, however, it’s between reducing artifacts such as stutter in action sequences and pans, and retaining detail. If you want to see how much detail you’re losing, pause in the middle of a fast action sequence and study the edges.
The difference from this setting can be dramatic—if your TV has the chops. Most TVs with 60Hz refresh rates suffer at least some occasional judder or jerkiness, while 120Hz models rarely do. The extra cycles smooth frame rate to refresh cycle conversion errors, and TVs in that class employ better CPUs. You can ignore the rest of the phrases and numbers vendors throw at you—it’s just their way of saying they try to ameliorate motion issues. Adjust to taste. We like smooth.
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Image size: Also known as Aspect Ratio. Most modern content features a 16:9 aspect ratio. Nearly all TVs in the flat-panel era have the same 16:9 ratio and the two marry perfectly. A lot of older movies and some TV broadcasts, on the other hand, use narrower aspect ratios and should be displayed pillar-boxed; i.e, with vertical black bars on the left and right. True 4K or 4096 x 2160 (17.1:9) would be slightly letter-boxed, or with small black borders at the top and bottom of the display—just like high-resolution content displayed on a display with a 4:3 aspect ratio.
If everyone looks unnaturally thin or thick, or images appear truncated, you have the wrong setting. The settings you want are called 16:9 or Wide for HD (720p), FHD (1080p), or UHD (2160p) content, and 4:3/Standard for broadcast or older movies. A modern TV should correctly sense the signal and automatically adjust the way it’s displayed—unless you override it.
Fine adjustment
Now let’s get down to the nitty-gritty, or what most people consider calibration. If you look around in your TV’s advanced settings, you’ll probably run across some complicated-looking stuff: color temperature, gain, and offset for red, green, and blue; white balance; and gamma. You can try to eyeball these settings, but as the differences can be so fine, you’d probably be better off with a hardware assist, which we’ll discuss next.
You can mess your picture up in a hurry with these fine settings, but they’re also the path to the last few percentage points of image accuracy. We can’t take you through the advanced settings of every of TV, but we can tell you about the most common settings and what they do.
Temperature: Color temperature settings affect the intensity of color across the spectrum in what’s basically a curve. They generally offer only a few choices that conform to industry standards. In effect, these run from cool (accentuating the blue end of the spectrum) to warm (the red end). Try the various temperatures before you mess around with the fine settings described below. We recommend you stick with the default unless you’re trying to match the output of another device or medium. About 5800K closely mimics sunlight.
White balance: This goes hand in hand with the RGB settings below, because they are what you use to correct the white balance. The basic idea is to adjust the red, green, and blue levels so they mix to achieve a pure white. With technology capable of producing pure red, green, and blue this would be easy. Quantum dots come close, but no other technology really does, so this will generally be an approximation and you’ll need to decide if you want a warm or a cool white.
RGB gain and offset: If your colors are skewed towards red, green, or blue, you can reduce or increase their level using these controls. Generally, you’ll use a white image and adjust the component colors so the image is actually white, or as close to it as the TV will render it. Also see White Balance.
Gamma: In several paragraphs, we could tell you what gamma is exactly (it has to do with interpreting a color space in terms of luminance). Instead, think of it as a mid-range control for your image. Mids like in audio. Gamma doesn’t affect white or black, but the colors in between. Too high a setting and they’re too dark; too low and they’re too light. The goal, unless you’re trying to match the output of another type of device, is to retain detail in dark areas, while not blowing it away in lighter areas.
Free Tv Calibration Software
Adjustment by phone
No, we’re not talking about calling tech support. This is about using THX’s Tune-Up app, which is available for both Android and iOS devices. Install it on your smartphone, connect the phone to your TV via HDMI, and the app will display calibration images (we used some of the older ones above), walk you through adjustments, and measure levels using the phone’s camera. It’s free, aside from the video adapter you’ll need to display its images on your TV (you could use a Chromecast, but compression might prevent you from getting accurate colors).
The high-priced spread
Now if you’d like really like everything as close to perfect as possible, but don’t want to spend a lot of hours being certified or learning about calibration, there is an alternative: SpectraCal offers auto-calibration via a combination of a high-quality color/light meter and software. It’s called called the CalMAN Enthusiast bundle, and it costs about $1,000.
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With any TV or projector that supports it, which includes models from JVC, Panasonic, Sharp, and now, significantly, Samsung’s top-of-the-line QLEDs, you can use the AutoCal function to automatically adjust the settings in a few minutes. Depending on the TV, generally all that’s required is pushing a button or two and running the meter over the display surface. Sweet. If you have the right TV and hardware.
SpectraCal has hinted at offering less-expensive and more widespread implementations of automatic calibration technologies in the future.
The HDR factor
A major part of the wide color gamut (more colors) and HDR (high dynamic range) movement, aside from a dramatically improved image of course, is the desire to automate the calibration of TVs and content so you get as accurate a portrayal of what the producers created as possible. Hands-free.
With HDR, the player queries the TV on its capabilities, the TV responds, and then the player tells the TV what it needs to do to best render the picture using information embedded in the content itself. The TV does the best it can, and that best varies wildly from slightly brighter to light sabers that jump right off the screen.
Nearly all the tweaks are the same for HDR, but you might find queries about color spaces such as REC 709, sRGB, or—with a very good TV—BT.2020. In all likelihood, any manual tweaking you could do will have minimal effect. At least that’s been our experience so far. But don’t let that stop you from trying.
Final Advice
Far be it for us to tell you what you want to do with your TV. Calibration is actually kind of fun and our own vintage SpectraCal is a hoot, albeit in a much geekier, number-heavy fashion. And there’s always the reset button. No, mis-calibrating your TV won’t break anything.
We were pleased results with the THX app, satisfied with what we came up with using the standard adjustments, and to be honest, satisfied with the picture without any tweaking at all. It didn’t hurt that the TVs in question were the Samsung Q9F and Sony A1E. If you’re not so lucky, have at it and let us know how you fare.
Note: When you purchase something after clicking links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. Read our affiliate link policy for more details.
There are plenty of options for calibrating your TV, ranging from calibration discs to professional calibration services, or even just the recommended settings we include with every review. If you’re interested in learning how to make basic adjustments to a TV’s picture, this guide will help to calibrate the essential settings on a TV. For each one, we include a test pattern that will help you find the best setting.
All patterns are from the AVS HD 709 calibration package, which can be downloaded in full here. To use them, just display the images on your TV via HDMI or USB, and then follow the instructions we outline below.
Note: Adjusting one setting can affect the results for another, so it’s a good idea to re-check the earlier patterns throughout the process, just to make sure everything is still working well.
Picture Mode
The first thing you want to adjust is the TV's picture mode. This setting usually has the biggest impact on picture quality. Each picture mode has different default settings, and some of them behave differently from one another, even if you try and match the settings across modes.
Sony | Samsung | LG | Vizio | Hisense | TCL | |
Recommended Setting | Custom | Movie | Expert (Dark Room) | Calibrated Dark | Theater Night | Movie |
Special settings for gaming
Good picture quality is important for video games, but you also want to make sure you don’t have too much input lag.
If that is a concern, you should choose the ‘Game’ picture mode (or ‘PC’ on some models), or go into the TV’s settings and enable ‘Game’ mode. From there, the rest of the settings can be adjusted normally, and the picture will look very similar to what you get with ‘Movie’ or ‘Standard.’ On some models though, the PC or Game modes disable many of the TV's picture enhancements, and some TVs even limit which picture modes are available.
Backlight
For LED TVs, the backlight setting determines the brightness of the LEDs that are used to light the image. The higher the setting, the brighter the picture will be. There is no right answer for this setting. Each user needs to adjust this setting to their specific viewing conditions. If you're in a bright room, for example, the TV has to be set to a brighter setting than if it was placed in a completely dark room. It also depends on personal preferences, as some people prefer a brighter or darker image.
Adjusting the backlight setting doesn't have a significant impact on overall picture quality. It tends to brighten everything pretty much equally, so although blacks tend to let a bit more light through, whites are brighter as well, so the contrast ratio actually remains about the same. For LED TVs, don’t worry about using a high backlight setting, it won’t make your TV wear out sooner.
Recommended setting: Whatever looks best to you, based on your viewing conditions and personal preference.
OLED TVs
OLED TVs don't have a backlight, so instead, look for a setting called 'OLED Light' on LG TVs, or 'Brightness' on Sony OLED TVs. Like the backlight setting above, you should adjust this to your viewing conditions. Unlike LED TVs though, higher backlight settings can have an impact on the life of your TV, so it isn't recommended to leave this at the maximum for SDR content.
Brightness
The ‘Brightness’ setting on a TV is used to adjust the depth of black on the screen. Set it too low and you will ‘crush’ the blacks, which means you’ll lose detail in darker images. Set it too high and the blacks won’t look dark enough.
Almost all TVs have this set correctly by default, so we recommend leaving it alone. If you want to try adjusting it using the pattern above, set the brightness to the minimum value and then increase it until you see the black portion on the left begins to lighten.
Recommended setting: Usually the default setting in ‘Movie’ or ‘Custom’ mode.
Contrast
The contrast setting adjusts the amount of detail present in bright images. If contrast is set too high, whites could be ‘clipped,’ which means there is detail being lost in bright portions of an image. Too low, and the bright portions of the image won’t look bright enough.
This setting should be pretty close to correct by default, but sometimes needs a bit of tweaking. Just lower the contrast setting on your TV to the minimum, and then increase until only lines 230-234 appear. It’s very rare for a new TV to clip the whites, so it’s fine to set the value to the max if there is no loss in detail at that high setting. As you can see from the above images, there's little difference between the correct setting and the maximum.
Recommended setting: Default, or max.
Sharpness
Adjusting a TV’s sharpness setting changes how it defines distinct objects on the screen. The proper sharpness setting will make things look about the same as they do in real life. Too much will exaggerate contours and lines. It's very rare for a TV to have the option to remove sharpness from an image, which is why only two images are compared here.
Because high levels of sharpness make an image ‘pop,’ it’s not uncommon for a TV’s picture to be over-sharpened by default. To adjust this setting with the pattern, increase Sharpness to as high as it goes, and then decrease until the lines look normal and any geometric patterns in the lines (usually diamond-shaped) go away.
Recommended setting: ‘0’ for Samsung, Vizio, TCL, Hisense & LG. ‘50’ for Sony and for Samsung TVs in PC mode.
Color
The ‘Color’ setting adjusts the level of saturation of colors in the TV’s images. Too little saturation will wash out the color of the image (extreme example at the above-left), and too much will oversaturate the picture (above-right).
Modern TVs almost always have this set correctly by default in their ‘Movie’ mode, and while the most basic way to modify it, which requires a blue filter, works pretty well, the best policy is to just leave this setting alone.
To adjust this setting with the pattern, look through a blue filter and adjust the color setting so that the blue box on the far left looks the same as the smaller gray boxes within.
Recommended setting: The default setting in the 'Movie' or 'Custom' picture mode.
Tint/Hue
This setting adjusts the amount of red and green tint to the image on the TV. Like the color setting, this is almost always correct by default, so there’s no need to adjust it yourself. Once again, if you decide to adjust this setting yourself, use a blue filter.
To adjust this setting using the pattern, look through your blue filter and adjust the tint/hue setting so that the magenta and teal boxes (located in the blue and red columns) look identical.
Recommended setting: The default setting in the 'Movie' or 'Custom' picture mode.
White balance & Color space
Adjusting the white balance means changing the amount of red, blue, and green in several different shades of gray. By correcting each of these shades, the overall color of the image is corrected to be as accurate as the TV can manage.
This can't be adjusted without specialized equipment, so we don't recommend trying to adjust this by eye. It also varies between units, even of the same model and size, so we don't recommend copying someone else's settings, including the values we provide on each review settings page.
Other common settings
Color tone/color temperature
Warmer color temperatures will make the picture look yellower, and cooler temperatures look bluer. We recommend using a warm temperature – that’s what professional calibrators use (it is the closest to the 6500k standard color temperature) - but you should choose whatever you like best.
Recommended setting: Warm
HDMI Black Levels
This setting determines the amount of detail in blacks and shadows, with 'Full' offering a bit more detail. It doesn't really matter which setting you choose, as long as both devices are set to the same thing. As you can see in the above images, a mismatch will result in poor blacks.
Recommended setting: It doesn't matter, as long as your TV and source are set to the same thing.
Dynamic contrast
Dynamic contrast is a software-based contrast enhancer. It doesn't actually increase the absolute contrast of the picture (pure blacks and pure whites stay the same). Instead, it gives the impression of a greater contrast by darkening the shadows and brightening up the highlights. We recommend turning off this feature as it can cause color banding and changes the intended gamma curve.
Recommended setting: Off
Local dimming
Local dimming adjusts the backlight in dark areas of the screen, to reduce the amount of backlight bleed and improve the contrast ratio. Not all TVs support this feature, and relatively few TVs do it well. You should adjust this to your personal preference, depending on your viewing conditions, and even the content you're watching. Learn more
Recommended setting: You should adjust this to your personal preference.
Motion Interpolation
The motion interpolation feature enhances the frame rate of video, smoothing it out and adding the ‘soap opera effect.’ Use it if you like it, disable it if you don’t. Note that this usually increases input lag a lot, so it’s not ideal for gaming. Learn more
Recommended setting: Personal preference.
Noise removal/reduction
Low-quality video (cable, DVDs, other low-resolution media) often have compression artifacts or other noise (little dots or general fuzziness). Most TVs have an option to reduce or remove noise, and it’s a good idea to use it for lower-quality video. When watching high-quality video (Blu-ray, video games, PC signals), these settings can cause a loss of fine details, so we don't recommend them. Unfortunately, it's difficult to capture the difference in a photo, which is why none are included for this feature.
Recommended setting: Off for most recent content, On for older, lower resolution videos.
Conclusion
Most TVs are able to achieve decent accuracy with only a few minor settings changes, most of which can be easily done by beginners at home, with no specialized equipment. For most people, having a TV professionally calibrated isn't necessary. In the end though, not everyone enjoys an accurate image, so you should adjust your TV to whatever looks best to you, adapted to your viewing conditions.
Glossary for different brands
Although most settings are pretty similar between brands, there are some notable differences in certain settings. Below, you'll find a list of the most commonly used settings on the 6 most popular brands that we test. Note that some settings tend to change from year-to-year, the setting names listed below are for the most recent 2019 models that we've tested.
Samsung | Sony | Vizio | LG | TCL | Hisense | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Picture mode | Picture Mode | Picture mode | Picture Mode | Picture Mode | Picture Mode | Picture Mode |
Backlight | Backlight | Brightness | Backlight | Backlight (OLED Light for OLED TVs) | TV brightness & Backlight | Backlight level |
Brightness | Brightness | Black Level | Brightness | Brightness | Brightness | Brightness |
Contrast | Contrast | Contrast | Contrast | Contrast | Contrast | Contrast |
Sharpness | Sharpness | Sharpness | Sharpness | Sharpness | Sharpness | Sharpness |
Color | Color | Color | Color | Color | Color | Color |
Tint | Tint (G/R) | Hue | Tint | Tint | Tint | Tint |
White balance & color space | White Balance/Color Space | Adv. color temperature | Color Tuner | White Balance / Color Management System | Expert Picture Settings (Only available on the companion app) | Color tuner, White balance |
Color temperature | Color Tone | Color temperature | Color Temperature | Color Temperature | Color temperature | Color temperature |
Full/limited RGB | HDMI Black Level | HDMI video range | (Automatic) | Black Level | (Automatic) | (Automatic) |
Dynamic contrast | Contrast Enhancer | Adv. contrast enhancer | Black detail | Dynamic Contrast | Dynamic Contrast | Active Contrast |
Local dimming | Local Dimming | Auto local dimming | Active Full Array | LED Local Dimming | Local contrast | Local Dimming |
Motion interpolation | Auto Motion Plus | Motionflow | Motion Control | TruMotion | Action Smoothing | Motion enhancement |
Noise removal | Digital Clean View | Random noise reduction, Digital noise reduction | Reduce Noise | MPEG Noise Reduction | Noise Reduction | Noise reduction, Digital noise reduction |
Black Frame Insertion | LED Clear Motion | Clearness | Clear Action | Motion Pro (OLED Motion for OLED TVs) | LED Motion Clarity | Motion Clearness |
Full Bandwidth | Input Signal Plus | HDMI signal format | Full UHD Color | Ultra HD Deep Color | HDMI Mode | HDMI 2.0 format |