These are the 3 settings I change on my new TV – and why you should

Your TV comes pre-set with heaps of “enhancements” that change your viewing experience, be it the color profile, sound settings or otherwise. However, the default settings aren’t always the best, and figuring out how to change your TV’s dizzying array of settings can be confusing.

But if you know where to look and what key settings to tweak, you can have your new TV looking and sounding amazing in no time.

1 Color settings

TV shows, movies and live broadcasts are all color corrected, meaning that what you see on your TV is not how the original image first appeared when it was captured or recorded. A specialist color engineer who adjusts the color of the footage as part of the broadcast signal or film that ends up on your TV. Colorists are highly skilled professionals who strive to create a specific viewing experience for you.

The manufacturer presets your TV to a certain color profile, which means that your TV further adjusts the color that has already been adjusted. The intent of these profiles is expressed in their names: Live, Movie, Sports or Games. These settings can be found in the TV’s main menu under Picture or something similar, e.g TV picture settings. The name will vary depending on the manufacturer.

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Find the profile setting named Standard, Neutral, or just Off. It may have a different name, but the intent will be clear – it’s an environment that does nothing. If you’re worried that even Standard or Off doesn’t show the most accurate color profile because different brands of TVs look different (and even Standard or Off still have some color configuration settings that can’t be changed), you can learn how to color calibrate your TV manually .

2 Sound settings

Sound designers create a specific sound palette for a show. It’s a painstaking process performed by professionals with years of experience honing magician-like audio skills.

As with color, TV manufacturers think that this highly edited sound needs to be improved, so they add extra settings to the TV to make sure the sound sounds “right”. It is sometimes called surround sound or 3D soundwhich creates virtual surround sound, but surround sound can create a very muddy or square listening experience. Other times, the setting will amplify the dialogue, which can be useful, especially with regard to the audio mixing of some modern shows and movies. In truth, most TV speakers are already good at amplifying dialogue because they emphasize specific frequencies where speech is heard instead of lower frequencies. And for everything else, there are subtitles!

To adjust the sound settings, go to the TV menu and search Sound, Soundor something similar. When you’re there, look for something that says Off, Standard or Flat if you want to hear what the creators wanted to hear.

Warning: TV speakers are not great. Although they have improved drastically over the past decade, the simple truth is that TV speakers are not large enough to accurately produce the sound waves needed across the entire audio spectrum for good sound. If you want to hear quality sound from the TV, you need a sound system or a soundbar. The good news is that a reasonable sound system or soundbar is quite inexpensive, often under $200. You will need to decide which sound system you should choose: 2.1, 3.1 or 5.1.

If you don’t want a sound system, you can buy a Bluetooth transmitter to send audio to your headphones or earphones. You can also pair your Apple Airpods with Apple TV.

3 Smooth motion settings

Television programs and movies are recorded at specific frame rates, which indicate how many times per second the camera captures one frame. In movies and TV shows, it’s 24 frames per second (also referred to as 24p), while live broadcasts and soap operas are recorded at 30 or 60 frames per second. This is why soap operas, live news and sports look “live” instead of the softer and more “cinematic” look of movies and TV shows.

Smooth motion effects take the cinematic look of a movie and make it look like a live broadcast. Therefore, watching a movie on a new TV can look “cheap” like a soap opera: all the pleasant motion blur is removed. Scientists have discovered that the brain sees fast-moving objects using blur or streaks, as seen in photographs, ABC Science reports. TV manufacturers are trying to improve something that doesn’t need to be improved. Your TV’s menu should have a video settings button where you’ll find the option to enable or disable smooth motion.

The size of the TV also significantly affects how frame rates and motion are perceived. Motion artifacts and the effects of frame rate differences are much more noticeable on larger screens. For example, on a smaller TV, the natural motion blur of a 24fps film may not stand out as much, but on a larger screen, the same blur may be more apparent due to the larger screen area and viewing angles. Similarly, higher frame rates look smoother and more impressive on larger TVs, making fast-paced action easier to watch. However, when motion smoothing is enabled on larger TVs, the exaggerated clarity of motion is even more pronounced, as the enhanced detail on the big screen makes unnatural motion intolerable.

Now you’re ready to enjoy what you watch as it was intended, without digital “enhancements” trying to fix something that isn’t broken. Your colors will be right, your audio will sound great, and your movies won’t look like soap operas. Sit back, relax and enjoy your new TV.