High definition TVs often come from the factory set to impress. And while the out-of-the-box settings on your HDTV may be initially impressive, they are rarely adjusted for maximum accuracy. Calibrating your HDTV will allow you to watch movies and videos with colors, detail and sharpness intended by the director. Properly calibrating your HDTV can also increase its life and lower its power consumption.
Instructions
1. Set the contrast. The contrast is the white level of the display. It should be set so that when viewing an image, a wrinkled white shirt for example, the shirt appears white while still maintaining a high level of detail. Turn this control up until the white parts of the picture "bloom" or lose detail, and then reduce the contrast until you can see sufficient detail. The appropriate adjustment will vary by make and model of TV, but generally somewhere around 70 percent will give the best results.
2. Set the brightness. Strange as it sounds, the brightness control actually adjusts the black level of your TV. View a shadowy scene from a movie and adjust this setting until the dark portions of the screen are sufficiently dark, while maintaining proper detail in the shadows. Sometimes, there will be a compromise between making the dark portions of the screen true black, while still being able to see 100 percent of the shadow detail. Because of the nature of their respective technologies, plasma HDTVs tend to achieve better black levels while maintaining shadow detail than LCD displays.
3. Set the sharpness. The correct setting for sharpness on an HDTV is off or zero. Sharpness is a form of artificial edge enhancement that became popular during the days of CRT TVs. However, HDTVs offer superior image quality and can resolve every line of detail from any video source. If the picture seems too soft with the sharpness turned off, turn up the sharpness until the edges of text and objects appear sufficiently sharp. Be aware, however, that when set too high, the sharpness control can actually degrade image quality.
4. Set the tint. On an HDTV, the tint control should be left at 50 percent. LCD or plasma displays typically do not require any adjustment of the red and green levels. If the tint on your displays seems overly red or overly green, you may adjust this control to compensate. Be aware, however, that this would most likely signify a defective HDTV display.
5. Set the color. The color control influences the level of color saturation. For the most natural colors, this should be left at 50 percent. However, if you desire the super-saturated, eye-catching look that is often seen on HDTVs displayed in stores, boost the color control to around 70 to 80 percent of the maximum setting.
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