Most TVs ship with default picture settings that are anything but optimized for home viewing. What you get instead is a blown-out, oversaturated image that may look great at a glance in a store but is simply too much for enjoying movies and TV shows in the comfort of your home.
Default picture settings on TVs are made for showrooms
It hurts the eyes!
TVs are made to be sold, and on a brightly lit showroom floor, a properly calibrated picture can look dim and washed out. For that reason, manufacturers usually crank brightness and color saturation to the max so the TV can cut through harsh lighting and stand out from the crowd.
That’s why most TVs default to an overly bright, punchy image. Brands can’t predict which units will end up as display models, so they play it safe and ship every unit with boosted brightness and color saturation out of the box. The problem is, those settings are less than ideal for home viewing. Once you unbox your new TV, you’re hit with excessive brightness and oversaturated colors that don’t do movies, shows, or games any justice.
On top of that, many TVs come with certain post-processing features enabled by default, some of which can genuinely hurt image quality. The bad news is that almost every brand does this, but the good news is you can fix it in just a few minutes by dialing back or disabling those settings.
- Display Technology
-
55-inch
- Refresh Rate
-
144Hz
Samsung’s “The Frame” is a stunning QLED 4K TV perfect for any wall. This latest model comes with customizable black or white bezels, a slim design, stunning visuals, and plenty of apps to stream your favorite content.
You can improve your TV’s image quality with just a few tweaks
All it takes is a couple of minutes of your time
Now, the most straightforward way to improve image quality is to enable Filmmaker Mode. This preset bundles a number of picture settings aimed at delivering more accurate colors, setting brightness to a comfortable level, disabling motion smoothing, and turning off other post-processing features that can reduce image quality.
If you’d rather fine-tune things yourself, the first setting to disable is motion smoothing (also known as motion interpolation). It makes everything look unnaturally smooth, which is why it’s commonly known as the “soap opera effect.” Filmmaker Mode usually disables it automatically, but you can turn it off manually as well. That said, motion smoothing isn’t always bad. You should leave it on when watching sports, play some games, or watch fast-moving documentaries.
Another setting that can flat-out degrade image quality is sharpness. Crank it too high, and the image gets noisy, with objects outlined by thin halos as the TV artificially enhances edges, which in turn destroys fine detail. You should either turn sharpness all the way down or keep it very low.
Other settings you might want to tweak include Contrast, Color, Brightness, and Backlight. Contrast and color adjust the overall contrast and color saturation. In most cases, default settings will make the colors “pop” and the image eye-catching. This is anything but positive for the long-term viewing experience because it can lead to color clipping, crush fine color detail, and decrease shadow detail. The good news is that you can fine-tune color saturation and contrast on every TV until you’re satisfied with the results.
Brightness is a bit trickier. Set it too high, and the image will look washed out; set it too low, and you might get a pitch-black image that loses detail in dark scenes. For the best result, select a dark scene in your favorite movie or TV show (or game) and adjust brightness until you can notice details in shadows while the image still looks relatively dark.
The backlight setting adjusts the intensity of the backlight on TVs that use it, including FALD (full-array local dimming) TVs, or the brightness of individual pixels on OLED TVs. Increasing this option will make the image brighter overall without washing out shadow detail, the way the brightness setting can. The higher the amount of ambient lighting in your house, the higher you’ll want to set backlighting.
In general, enabling Filmmaker Mode is the most straightforward way to improve your TV’s picture quality. Some TVs have similar image presets—usually called Cinema, Theater, Movie, or something in that vein—that should look pretty solid as well. If Filmmaker Mode looks too dim or bland for your taste, check out other similarly named modes available on your TV. Whatever you do, I recommend avoiding modes called Vivid, Dynamic, Bright, or similar.
- Dimensions
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57 x 33 x 3.0 (without stand)
- Display Technology
-
LCD Mini-LED
- Brand
-
Hisense
- Refresh Rate
-
Up to 144Hz
- Resolution
-
4K (3840 x 2160)
- HDR?
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Dolby Vision, HDR10, HDR10+, HLG, Advanced HDR
The Hisense U7N is an affordable TV that packs tons of specs, impressive brightness, and all the gaming features you’ll need, including a high refresh rate screen and HDMI 2.1 ports.
If you like how your TV looks with its default settings, that’s fine too
Switching to Filmmaker Mode and dialing back motion smoothing and sharpness works well for most people, but if you prefer the default picture, that’s fine too! No one gets to decide what looks best to you.
I only ask that you check out Filmmaker and Cinema modes and try watching a few scenes (or a couple of episodes of your favorite TV show) with motion smoothing disabled and sharpness dialed back. If you don’t like how your TV’s image looks that way, you can always switch back.
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
