How to properly adjust the image of your television: brightness, colors, contrast, sharpness?

Today it is tempting to afford a large format television with an extra-flat screen. But if you hope to find the quality of the images that made you crack during the demo in store, it is not enough to plug in and turn on your television screen. This guide covers the main settings and adjustments you can make to get the perfect picture and get the most out of your viewing sessions.

Before starting to make the settings, make sure that all your sources, such as internet box, decoder, console or Blu-ray player, are correctly configured. These should, indeed, automatically adjust their settings to match those of your TV - alas, this is not always guaranteed. Just click the "info" button on your TV to check that your resolution is set to 1080p - or 2160p, if you have a 4K TV - and away you go.

If you want to better understand your TV settings and whether they're worth changing, here's a handy guide to fixing essential TV calibration functions.

1. Choose the right picture mode

Almost all televisions have a variety of picture modes, each corresponding to a specific type of content. You will usually find "Cinema" (called "Movie" on some models), "Dynamic", "Standard", and "Sport" modes. A quick review of these options is enough to see that the grain of the image changes drastically from one mode to another.

These main modes allow different parameters to be calibrated at once, such as color temperature, backlight, motion and edge enhancement, gamma. Most TVs are automatically set to "Standard" mode, which strikes a middle balance between the above settings. Although this mode is perfectly suited to daytime viewing, it is the "Cinema" or "Movie" mode that represents the colors most faithfully, it ensures that the image is as close as possible to that desired by the director of a film or a series.

Here is a quick overview of the most popular modes.

Cinema / Film: If you are looking for a simple setting that will allow you to obtain a quality image, you can now turn to Cinema mode (which, on some models, may also be called Film or Warm). This mode tends to render colors more accurately. If you've used other modes before, you might find that this one displays colors in a smoother way, even adding a slightly reddish or amber tint to them (less aggressive without all that blue light). It is often best to use this setting if you are watching television in very low ambient light. If you watch more TV during the day or in a very bright room, you may find another setting more suitable.

Standard: This is usually the default setting you find on your TV when you take it out of the box. It often gives a more bluish tint to the image, while contrast, sharpness and brightness are calibrated to Medium. It's great for watching daily shows or the news, but you should probably skip it if you want a more cinematic experience. This mode is also great if you have a room full of natural light, as it strikes a good balance between film mode and dynamic mode (below).

Dynamic / Vivid: as its name suggests, this mode will bring out the colors, increasing the saturation in order to exaggerate the contrast. The downside is that it can make images look too saturated. This is the opposite of Cinema mode, and rather than giving a warm/reddish tint, you'll have a cool/blue tint applied to make the image look unnaturally bright.

Sport: If you are a sports fan (of any discipline), then you might want to consider using this setting to watch your next game. Sport mode is a bit like Dynamic Adjustment which artificially boosts colors and contrast - in this case it's to help better distinguish players, goals, and other key points from the rest of the image. It might be too blatant, but you'll usually find motion-related tweaks that will make fast movements a little smoother. Like for example the Motion Flow option used on Sony Bravia televisions to avoid motion blur. The Sport mode of some Samsung TVs even calibrates the audio settings to better recreate the sound of a stadium.

Gaming: If you want to improve your gaming experience, choosing this mode is definitely your best option. This mode works by removing all non-essential video processing to reduce latency, while increasing color and contrast to make graphics appear clearer and more colorful.

2. Improve the fluidity of movements

This setting can go by many different names, including motion smoothing or frame interpolation. However, they all do the same thing. Motion Enhancer helps eliminate ghosting and blurring that occurs in fast moving images by artificially inserting more frames into the video.

If you're just watching live TV or sports, then this option should come in handy, as these images are typically shot at 30 frames per second. However, if you watch a program filmed at 24 frames per second, it will result in unnatural motion (also known as the Soap Opera effect).

Luckily, it's fairly easy to disable this option when you don't need it. Where you find this setting is entirely up to the manufacturer, but the word "movement" will usually be present. It will be called Auto Motion Plus for Samsung, TruMotion for LG, Fine Motion/AquoMotion for Sharp and finally MotionFlow for Sony.

3. Adjust image sharpness

You might think that the best way to get the sharpest image is to push all your settings to the max, but it's actually quite the opposite. If you are using Movie/Cinema mode, then chances are this is already lower for you.

Adjusting the sharpness of the image does not increase its sharpness itself, but will rather improve the outlines of the image. When these are enhanced, it gives the impression that there is a certain halo or shadow around it, which makes the whole image look unnatural.

To improve the sharpness of the image, it is therefore sufficient to lower the sharpness until you can no longer see this halo. The image will then become noticeably less sharp when the setting is at zero; if it's not enough for your liking, simply increase the setting a notch or two, just to make sure you don't miss an essential detail.

4. Adjust contrast and brightness

These two parameters go hand in hand. Contrast adjusts the bright part of the image while Brightness adjusts the dark parts. By setting the contrast too high you will find that you will lose detail, but if you set it too low then your image will look faded. Likewise, if you set the brightness too high, your image will get a washed out look.

The best way to adjust these two settings is to download a calibration template or buy a DVD that will perfectly calibrate your brightness, contrast, and other variables. But it's important to note here that the different channels and streaming options can all look slightly different - so your contrast settings for watching More Beautiful Life might look entirely different when watching Netflix for example.

5. Enable/disable backlight and light sensors

The backlight of an LCD screen - or even the screen itself when it comes to an OLED television which emits its own light - modifies the intensity of the television's light source. In low light, the backlight should be set lower, while in bright light, it should be set higher. Ensuring the backlight is set correctly reduces the risk of eye strain and headaches, and at the same time ensures that the image is clearly visible in relation to its surroundings.

Some Samsung TVs even offer an ambient light sensing feature (or ECO sensor on older models). This measures the light in the room in order to automatically modify the brightness of the screen accordingly and thus reduce energy consumption. You will find a similar function with the Dolby Vision IQ, which adds a light sensor to certain Panasonic and LG televisions. This is to adjust the image calibration for Dolby Vision footage, depending on the light level in the room. Panasonic's new OLED TVs also feature an intelligent detection function that extends this calibration to non-DV content.

We've only covered a few of the different settings possible in this guide here, but as you can see, a few simple changes to your TV settings will greatly improve your viewing experience in front of the screen.