How do I set up a new TV's picture properly?

Televisions leave the factory configured to win a side-by-side comparison in a brightly lit shop: maximum colour, maximum sharpness, aggressive processing. In a normal living room those settings produce a picture that is oversaturated, artificially edged and unstable. Undoing them takes about twenty minutes and costs nothing, and it is the single largest improvement available to most sets.

Step by step

1. Get out of demo or shop mode first.If the set was an ex-display unit, or if you accepted the shop option during setup, a demo mode may still be running. It overrides much of what you change. Look in the general or system settings for a usage mode and set it to home.
2. Choose the least processed picture preset.Cinema, movie, filmmaker or standard, in that order of preference. Avoid vivid, dynamic and sports presets — they are the shop settings under different names. This one change does most of the work.
3. Turn off motion smoothing.The control that invents frames between the real ones and makes film look like video. Manufacturers all name it differently, so look for motion, smooth, flow or judder.
4. Turn off dynamic contrast, eco dimming and ambient light sensing.These constantly change the brightness while you watch, which reads as the picture breathing. A set brightness you chose is better than one the television keeps adjusting.
5. Set brightness and backlight for your room, not for the shop.Backlight or OLED light controls how bright the panel is; brightness controls how dark the black end is. Set the backlight so the picture is comfortable in the light you normally watch in, then adjust brightness until shadow detail is visible without the dark areas looking grey.
6. Turn sharpness down.Sharpness on a television does not add detail; it draws artificial outlines around edges. Most sets look better with it at or near zero, and the effect is most visible on faces and text.
7. Set colour temperature to warm.It will look yellow for about ten minutes and then look correct. The cool setting most sets ship with is blue-biased because blue reads as brighter in a showroom.
8. Turn game mode on for the input the console uses.It bypasses most picture processing to cut the delay between pressing a button and seeing the result. Set it on that input only; it is not the right mode for film.
9. Repeat for each input, and check whether high dynamic range has its own settings.Most sets store picture settings separately per input, and separately again for HDR content. Setting it once while watching a streaming app leaves the rest untouched.

Tips

• Judge the picture on ordinary material you know well — a drama, a familiar film — not on a demonstration reel, which is graded to flatter.
• Watch in the lighting you actually use. A picture set up in a dark room at night will be unwatchable on a bright afternoon and vice versa; if the set stores presets per input you can keep a brighter one for daytime.
• If two people disagree, the accurate setting is usually the one that looks slightly dull at first. Give it a week before changing back.

Common mistakes

• Turning the backlight to maximum permanently — It is uncomfortable in a normal room, shortens panel life on some technologies, and on OLED increases the risk of retaining a static image. Match it to the room instead.
• Paying for a professional calibration on a mid-range set before doing the free things — The presets, processing and brightness account for the great majority of the improvement. Calibration refines what is left.

If it doesn't work

Questions people ask