There are a lot of options to sort through when you’re choosing a new TV. Once you’ve made your choice you’ll still need to set up the TV at home and customize it so you get the best picture quality. Setting up the features and fine-tuning your settings can take a lot of time. That’s why a lot of people choose professional TV calibration.
Is there a difference between TV calibration and setup?
What is TV calibration? One thing to keep in mind is that TV calibration is not the same as TV setup. TV setup is working through the basic setup tasks when you first bring home a new TV. These tasks include selecting a language, adding the TV to your home’s Wi-Fi network, and scanning for your favourite channels. TV calibration, on the other hand, is the process of fine-tuning your specific settings for the best picture quality.
Read our guide on how to set up your TV to get the best viewing experience.
Why television calibration is important
Why should you calibrate your TV? New televisions are set to run standard factory settings. These settings are not optimized for your home or your personal preferences. And that’s where TV calibration comes in. To calibrate a TV you’ll need to adjust your brightness, colour, contrast, tint, sharpness, and HDR.
If you don’t calibrate your TV you may find colours are too bright. Or you may notice that the contrast between deep blacks and bright whites isn’t as stark as it should be. Calibrating your TV means you can achieve the best picture quality possible while also reducing any eye strain you’d get from watching for hours. It might even expand the lifespan of your TV because it can reduce the amount of power it uses by powering it off after a set time or dimming your backlight when you aren’t watching.
The TV industry has a standard baseline they use to calibrate their own equipment. The baseline is called a ‘test pattern’ and it’s used by all broadcasters for their cameras, lighting, and TV sets. This global standard ensures the TV program or movie looks the same on everyone’s TVs. If the TV industry didn’t have a global standard, you’d need to calibrate your TV every time you turned the channel.
Because of this standard, everyone watching a TV show should experience the same colour accuracy, the same contrast between white and black, and the same sharp details. Once the TV show reaches your home, the main difference in picture quality will be due to the type of TV you have and how you’ve calibrated the settings for your home.
Why aren’t new TVs pre-calibrated?
You might think it would be easier to just pre-calibrate all TVs with the optimal settings. But there’s a reason why your new TV isn’t calibrated. TVs can’t be pre-calibrated because there isn’t no one size fits all viewing environment. A TV will look very different in your home than your neighbour’s home. Even if you move your TV within your home from a bright living room to a dim basement, you’d still have to make setting adjustments.
Daytime vs nighttime TV settings
Your TV picture will look different during the day than it does at night. So you’ll want to calibrate your TV for daytime and night viewing. If you have a new Mini-LED TV, your brightness should be turned up during the day to compensate for the brightness in the room. If you watch at night and the room is dark, the brightness can be turned down so the glare won’t hurt your eyes. Your goal should be to have a consistent viewing experience no matter what time of the day you’re watching.
Ambient mode on TVs
Some of the latest TVs have Ambient Mode. Ambient Mode will sense the lighting in the room and auto-adjust your TV’s brightness according to the ambient light. If you have Ambient Mode turned on you’ll notice the picture may seem a bit dimmer, then it will brighten up on its own. It’s a useful mode to have if you have a room with variable lighting conditions.
Should you DIY your TV calibration or hire an expert?
There are two routes you can choose if you’d like to calibrate your TV. You can calibrate it yourself by tweaking the built-in presets found in the calibration menu. With today’s high-resolution TVs, however, more and more people are opting to hire an expert.
DIY calibration
It can take a lot of time and patience to calibrate your TV on your own. But it can be done via the TV presets found in the TV settings. If your TV offers a companion app to calibrate your TV, you can use your phone and the app to customize your settings.
Depending on your TV, you’ll find a variety of presets including movie, sports, gaming, vivid, Dolby, and more. Changing your TV to different presets while watching a movie or gaming is a good way to get a baseline of what you like and don’t like. You can go through each individual setting and adjust your brightness, contrast, and white balance, then watch your TV to see how you like it. Just be careful you don’t over-tweak your settings or you’ll have to undo the entire process.
Hiring a pro to calibrate your TV
If you don’t want to take on TV calibration yourself, you can hire a pro like Geek Squad to do it for you. Geek Squad will use calibration tools and standards to perfectly adjust the settings for your room. A few tasks they can do include:
- Adjust your picture settings by calibrating your brightness, contrast, backlight, colour, and more
- Calibrate two TV inputs using ISF calibration tools and standards, reducing noise and adjusting motion processing for your specific TV use
- Offer you the results of your TV calibration
- Check for optimal day and night settings
- Fine-tune your TV based on your specific lighting conditions
Ready for the best viewing experience? Let Geek Squad handle your TV calibration. Schedule your service today for flawless picture quality!
How to calibrate your TV for the best picture
Ready to calibrate your TV DIY-style? Follow these steps to achieve a crisp, natural-looking display tailored to your home environment.
Step 1: Choose the right picture mode
The first step is selecting the best preset picture mode. Most TVs come with multiple modes, but not all of them are ideal for home viewing. Navigate to Settings → Picture Mode and choose “Cinema,” “Movie,” or “Filmmaker” mode. These modes provide the most accurate colours and natural brightness levels. If you’re gaming, switch to “Game” mode to reduce input lag for a smoother experience. Avoid “Vivid” or “Dynamic” modes, as they are designed for showrooms and tend to oversaturate colours while increasing brightness to unnatural levels.
Step 2: Adjust the brightness & contrast
Brightness and contrast settings play a huge role in your TV’s picture quality. Brightness controls the black levels, while contrast affects the intensity of whites. To adjust brightness, play a scene with dark areas. Lower the brightness until blacks appear deep but still show details. For contrast, use a bright scene—like a snowy landscape—and increase the setting until whites look vibrant without washing out fine details.
Step 3: Set the colour & tint
Colour (or saturation) determines how vivid the image appears. Too much colour can make skin tones look unnatural, while too little makes everything appear dull. Adjust this setting until skin tones look realistic and lifelike. The tint (or hue) setting usually doesn’t need major adjustments, but if skin tones appear too green or too red, make small tweaks to correct it.
Step 4: Fine-tune sharpness
Many TVs apply excessive sharpness by default, creating unnatural edges and artificial-looking images. Reducing the sharpness setting to 10–20% (or turning it off completely for 4K content) allows the TV to display a more natural, high-resolution image without adding unnecessary enhancements. Note that there are TVs with default sharpness of zero that is already optimized, so turning it off may not be necessary.
Step 5: Turn off unnecessary features
Most modern TVs come with extra processing features that can negatively impact picture quality. Motion smoothing, often called the “Soap Opera Effect,” makes movies look unnaturally smooth and should be turned off. Noise reduction and edge enhancement are unnecessary for high-quality content and can make the image look blurry or artificial, so it’s best to disable them. Additionally, turn off Eco Mode, as it dims the screen unpredictably and interferes with consistent brightness levels.
Step 6: Adjust the backlight
The backlight setting controls how bright your screen appears and should be adjusted based on your room’s lighting conditions. In bright rooms, increase the backlight for better visibility, while in dimly lit rooms, lowering it will create a more comfortable viewing experience. Unlike brightness, which affects black levels, the backlight simply determines overall screen illumination.
Step 7: Check your viewing angles
To get the best picture quality, sit directly in front of the TV at eye level. Some TVs, particularly those with VA panels, suffer from colour shifts when viewed from an angle. If you notice a loss in colour accuracy, consider repositioning your seating or mounting the TV at an optimal height.
Step 8: Use a calibration disc or app (optional but recommended)
For even more precise calibration, use a calibration disc or an app like Spears & Munsil or Disney WOW, which provide test patterns to fine-tune settings. Some TVs also offer built-in test patterns under “Advanced Settings” that can help you adjust colour, brightness, and contrast more accurately.
Is TV calibration worth it?
Yes, TV calibration is worth it if you want the most accurate colours, balanced contrast, and optimal brightness for a true-to-life viewing experience. Factory settings are often too bright and oversaturated, designed for store displays rather than home use. A properly calibrated TV enhances picture quality for movies, gaming, and sports, making visuals more immersive and natural. Follow the step-by-step guide on how to calibrate your TV. Or check out Geek Squad for professional calibration services.
