Improving the image quality of televisions: the settings you should know

By improving the image fidelity of our televisions, we will be able to feel in the middle of the football field, while we enjoy the Champion games from our sofa. It is important to know the necessary contrast, brightness, and saturation settings to achieve the best image quality.

Although some users are not aware of the possibilities provided by the personalized picture style, color and brightness adjustments that today’s televisions allow, many others have spent a good time trying to calibrate their televisions but without good results, since it is not a task as easy as we think.

Years ago, televisions had color presets that “enlivened” the tones of the image, which were spectacular but very unrealistic. Also, some models resulted in an overly bright image with a slight bluish tint. Current televisions provide a much higher image quality, being increasingly realistic, showing greater detail thanks to its high resolution. Normally, these TVs come with their picture pre-set.

However, it’s important to know that there are a few little tricks you can use to further improve the picture quality and brightness of even the best 4K TV. One of the main things you should do when you want to adjust the 4K TV in your home on your own is to look at the user manual, so that you can know the location and operation of the buttons on the TV, since each model can vary slightly in its design and button layout. In this way, we avoid making any mistakes when handling the device.

Normally, to calibrate a television, you have to access the configuration menu, so that you can manipulate all the image parameters to enhance the naturalness of the videos. Among the most common parameters that televisions allow us to control are saturation, contrast, sharpness, lighting, brightness or color temperature.

Main parameters to adjust

Contrast is one of the main parameters that we can freely adjust from the menu of our television. This value refers to the difference between the darkest and the brightest color. When adjusting the contrast, we will be modifying the black and white levels within an image, however, we must take into account that, if we increase the contrast level too much, we will lose absolutely any detail within the white areas of the image. On the other hand, when the contrast is too low, we will not be able to appreciate the difference between one object and another. According to professionals, the sign of correct contrast calibration within an image is when we can see all the details of the image perfectly and avoid white “spots”.

Another of the key parameters for the basic regulation of the image of our television is the brightness. When adjusting the brightness of an image, the idea is to make the black areas of the image as dark as possible. An easy way that we can apply is by placing a dark film. In this way, we can have more reference areas to adjust. Gradually regulate the brightness of the image until the black areas do not look gray.

Backlighting is only allowed to be changed on some TV models, so if you don’t know which 4K TV to buy and want a model that lets you manage backlighting, you can choose the set that has this option. This adjustment allows you to change the incidence that the light has on the background of the image, which can be from below or from above, as desired. Most users recommend turning the intensity down if you’re watching a movie at night in the dark and turning it up if you’re in a room with good lighting.

On the other hand, the saturation regulates the intensity of the colors that the image has, so it is possible to completely reduce the saturation to obtain a black and white image. On the contrary, if we increase the saturation, we will be able to give more life to the colors. However, it is important to note that the best results are achieved by setting this value to a medium setting.

Another value that, being wrongly adjusted, can show us completely psychedelic images is the color temperature. With this option, we can balance between blue and red. So if we increase the red or blue color level, we will be “cooling” or “warming” the image respectively. For this reason, many users suggest using this value in the middle, although you can achieve very interesting results by slightly adjusting this value.

There is a factor that we often go unnoticed when adjusting our new television and that is the aspect ratio. Taking into account that each movie usually has a certain aspect ratio when it was recorded, it is important that this ratio is the same as our screen. Otherwise, we will get to see a distorted image, since the player will do its best to adjust the pixels of the movie to the size that is adjusted on your screen, so if there is a difference between these values, we will see a cropped image, crushed or stretched.

Lastly, don’t worry if after messing around with all these settings the result is an undecipherable picture, as you can always go back to where your TV came from the factory. Therefore, do not refrain from experimenting with the graphic values ​​of the screen until you get the combination that you like the most. Remember that calibrating a television will depend on the use you are going to give it, in addition to the fact that you must feel comfortable viewing the screen, so color adjustment has a certain level of subjectivity. In addition, the lighting of the room and the viewing angle are also an important factor when making our adjustments.