HDTV Secrets

So you’ve taken the time to shop and choose your favorite HDTV set and installed it in your home, and your television package is all set up. Now what? While you can get Direct TV as soon as soon as you turn on the set, we suggest taking a few more minutes to adjust your TV’s settings for the perfect viewing experience.If you want to start watching as soon as possible, check out the picture presets that are factory-included. These are fairly standard across models, and include settings like:

• Dynamic/Vivid: Greatly increases contrast, sharpness, brightness
• Standard: Slightly increases contrast, sharpness, brightness
• Movie/Pro: Adjusts contrast and brightness for realism; reduces/eliminates enhancements (like sharpness)

Even after selecting one of these modes, you can further customize it to your liking. You can also go through all the settings on your ownbut it helps to know what they are first. Thanks to CNET for these handy descriptions and recommendations (summarized by me):

• Backlight: Controls the light emitted by the screenlower it for darker rooms (LCD displays only).
• Brightness: Controls the darkness of the darker image areastest with a DVD with letterbox bars.
• Contrast: Controls intensity of bright areas of the imageon non-backlit or cell-lit sets, controsl overall light output. Test with a DVD scene with a white object with details.
• Color: Controls intensity of colorstest on a close-up of a face with light skin.
• Sharpness: Adds artificial edges to objectsleave at zero unless text appears soft on the edges.
• Color Temperature: Controls the gray color, which affects all other colorschoose the Warm or Low option.

The settings you end up choosing will depend on both your personal preference, and on the lighting in your TV room. It’s best not to watch movies in complete darkness, since this can cause strain to your eyes. Instead, place a dim light behind brighter televisions while leaving the rest of the room dark. CNET recommends using a daylight bulb, which provides the perfect ambient lighting for your viewing experience.