Smart TVs are becoming more and more complex. And far from each time we see better quality content on them, sometimes just the opposite happens. It is enough to neglect a little with the television remote so that our television stops giving a beautiful image and we begin to see content with bad levels of contrast or colors that are too exaggerated. In this post we will explain what the Image modes, as well as which settings on your television you should never touch to ensure a quality image.
Do I have to calibrate a television?
Good question. In the world of video production and photography, devices are often used to measure the color accuracy of a panel and adjust it to the correct values. This serves both to ensure that you are working with true values ​​and to match the color of two or more monitors. But… is there something like this for televisions? Or, better yet: Is it necessary to get to that point?
Hardware to calibrate TVs exists, but none of us is going to need professional help to calibrate a simple TV. Usually the factory calibrated televisions mid-range and high-end is more than decent. You just have to find the suitable parameters within the settings of your television to ensure that the panel is doing its best.
What is really impossible is to find a single fit capable of encompassing all the possibilities of our television. In other words, it is not the same to watch a horror movie at 4 in the afternoon with the Sun shining on the screen than to watch a football game at night with very soft ambient lighting. To adapt our screen to these two situations so oppositeyes, we will have to intervene To some extent. And that's exactly why there are picture modes predefined from the TV.
What are Image Modes for?
Televisions often come with various adjustments that allow us to quickly change a series of de parameters such as contrast, saturation, brightness and temperature with just the push of a button. Normally some come 4 different settings, being always common the standard mode, the vivid one, video games and cinema. Other models also bring one or two options for the user to save their own Custom settings.
If you don't know what each one does, don't worry. In the following lines we will explain a little what does each one do in general terms.
Vivid / Dynamic
This mode defaults to a setting of gloss one hundred and one hundred percent color saturation also to the maximum. Televisions usually come with this preset for your in-store demo. In this way, the panel will stand out from the others with which it competes.
Beyond that usefulness, you should always discard that mode. It is not intended for actual TV use. By the way, it is likely that when you take your television out of the box, it will come with this mode by default.
Game / Game
game mode turn off artificial intelligence on tv in charge of improving and softening the image. Why would I then want to activate this mode while playing a game on the PlayStation? Because it eliminates the delay. By activating this mode, your screen will be reproducing exactly what the console is generating, without any delay through. Thus, you will avoid a delay from when you press the button until you see the result on TV. And not only that. You will also see each exactly as the hardware has produced it, i.e. without any artificial smoothing or framing that may hinder your experience. Before you start playing, you should put this preset mode on your TV.
Sports
Believe it or not, the sports mode also has its usefulness. At the image level, we could say that it simply saturates the greens a little more and cool the image in general. Also the configuration, depending on which brands, allows the vision of the screen to improve from different angles. And the sound can also change, creating a more surround sound, like that of a stadium.
Movie
This way It is the one with which the panel is usually calibrated during the manufacturing process.. According to Soner Oklu, a quality control engineer at Samsung, this setting is the one that will offer better performance From the beginning. However, it is only optimal if we are going to view movies and series, that is, content that usually has dark images. Other manufacturers like LG refer to this mode as 'Calibrated'. Sony does it with the term 'Dark'.
What Soner Oklu refers to with his statements is that the movie mode is the only one capable of showing the capabilities of the panel as they come in the specification sheet. Of course, it must be taken into account that, for this to happen, the television will be adjusted to a lower brightness level than what we will see in other modes. Therefore, it will have to reduce ambient light of the room to improve contrast. Otherwise, the movie mode will give us a rather dull image.
Natural Mode and Standard Mode
These two modes are present in samsung tvs, but some other manufacturers also use its variants with other terms. In any case, the usefulness of these modes is to satisfy those users who are not looking for a precise image, but rather a offroad mode so you don't have to change the setting with the remote.
Natural Mode uses a ambient light sensor to measure the lighting in the room and thus adjust the parameters correctly. The panel will not be seen with correct precision, but it will allow comfortable viewing of the contents without having to turn off lights or lower blinds. On the other hand, the Natural Mode is similar, starting from a cflatter configuration, but does not use the sensor to adjust the parameters.
Parameters to modify in the configuration of your TV
Picture modes are a good point. Especially, the Cinema / Movie Mode. However, it can happen that this setting looks a little off compared to the ambient light in your living room. Can I touch more parameters? Yes, but you should follow these tips to create your own custom profiles:
- Gamma control: According to Ray Soneira, CEO of DisplayMate, the gamma adjustment should be the first thing we touch if the calibrated mode of our television does not adapt to the lighting in the room. This setting affects both brightness and contrast and should be set to 2.2 by default. If we reduce the number, the screen will look brighter, but we will also lose detail in the blacks. If we raise the parameter to 2.5, just the opposite will happen: the bright areas will be reduced, but the detail in the dark parts of the image will increase.
- Bright: Soneira also believes that the names with which the manufacturers name the parameters are incorrect. For example 'brightness', sometimes what it does is increase the backlight of the panel, making blacks appear gray.
- Saturation: If you start from the base of the calibrated profile, you should touch this setting quite carefully. If you don't, you run the risk of mixing different shades of bright colors into one mix.