Getting the best from your HD television

Factory television settings might look the business in the shop - but require a different approach to look good at home.

You've splurged on a spiffing new 50" flat panel TV and after hastily unpacking and getting it set up, you power it up only to discover its on-screen performance isn't a patch on the stunning HD footage you saw back at the store.

If your first thoughts are that your new telly is a dud, don't panic, there's probably nothing wrong with your TV and it almost certainly isn't a dud. Chances are that it simply needs a few picture setting tweaks before it'll really shine.

Turn it down

Speaking of shining, nearly all flat screen TVs are set at the factory for OTT brightness, contrast and colour output in-store. Most retail stores are harshly lit environments where throttling up the TVs brightness, colour and contract levels will make it stand out to (hopefully) grab your attention. Unfortunately, amped-out brightness, colour and contrast levels usually look pretty awful in most average lounges.

The softer and warmer lighting typically used in homes usually demands very different settings to those used in the store and these need to be tweaked before your new telly can deliver the eye-pleasing video you saw at the shop.

Most TVs come with a number of different preset (such as "vivid" which is used by most retailers to make your TVs colours "pop", "cinema," "game," and "custom," etc.), changing presets will improve things, a little more tweaking can deliver stunning results.

Dim the lights

The most important picture adjustments on virtually any TV are its brightness and contrast settings. Ideally brightness levels need to be set dark enough so that the screen displays rich, deep blacks, but not so low that dark on-screen footage loses detail. Set brightness levels too high however and the picture will look washed out. Accurate dark blacks usually translate into greater perceived picture sharpness.

The next big tweak is contrast which adjusts the difference between the brightest white and the deepest black. The brighter your room, chances are that you'll see less picture detail in dark on-screen images. Adjusting the contrast on your new telly should help to fix this, allowing you to pick out more detail in on-screen shadow. Getting contrast levels right should allow you to get the brightest whites from your new telly. As with brightness levels, aim to adjust contrast levels to brilliant white levels whilst not washing out details in brighter parts of the picture.

If your new flat-screen object of desire is an LCD telly, then you may also want to try turning down its backlight. LCD TVs create video images by shining a fluorescent or LED backlight through the LCD screen. On most LCD TVs, backlighting is usually amped up to its maximum level at the factory. Turning it down will not only save you dollars on your electricity bill, but will also save you from having wear shades whilst watching the news.

Correcting colour

By default most TVs come out of the factory displaying over-the-top colours, making everything look almost cartoon-like. Throttling down colour settings can quickly fix this, giving you more natural colours, which whilst initially subdued by comparison, will be a lot easier on the eyes longer term.

Ideally colour levels should be adjusted downwards until skin tones don't look flushed or grey and on screen vegetation looks lifelike. The best way of doing this is to turn the colour down until the on-screen image is almost black and white, and then increasing it until you hit the flesh tone sweet-spot.

If skin tones still look too pink or too yellow, check to see if your telly has a hue or tint control. Tweaking this can adjust your TVs colour tint to a more realistic level. Beware however that colour levels and tint settings interact with each other, so you'll probably need to work with both to get your TVs colour settings just right.

Odds n' sods

If a more scientific approach to tweaking your telly appeals and you don't mind splashing out some more cash, you can purchase a copy Digital Video Essentials, a video calibration DVD.

If however you're a cheapskate (like me), you could always use the THX Optimiser which is bundled in with most DVD movies displaying the THX certification logo. Both options include a raft of test patterns that'll allow you to get your TVs settings to what AV professionals recommend.

Another gotcha that catches many out is the fact that some TVs store different colour, brightness and contrast settings for different AV inputs. If you find that the picture tweaks you've made only apply to a single input, chances are that you'll need to adjust picture settings for each source. Because the colour characteristics can vary drastically between component, S-Video and HDMI inputs this isn't necessarily a bad thing.