How to calibrate your TV by eye

A colorimeter and calibration software will squeeze out the last few percent. But most of the ugliness in a factory TV picture comes from a handful of settings, and you can fix those by eye in ten minutes with a few test patterns. Here is the order that gets you most of the way.

Start with the right picture mode

This one change does more than all the rest combined. Out of the box most TVs run in Vivid, Dynamic or Standard, which crank brightness, sharpness and color to sell the set in a showroom. Switch to Cinema, Movie or Filmmaker mode. It will look duller and warmer for about a day, until your eyes adjust and everything else starts looking cartoonish. This is the mode the content was mastered to look right in.

Turn off the processing

Modern TVs pile on "enhancements" that fight the picture. Find and switch these off:

Motion smoothing, which causes the soap opera effect and makes film look like cheap video.
Noise reduction and MPEG noise reduction, which smear fine detail. Off for anything modern.
Dynamic contrast and black enhancer, which pump levels around and crush detail at both ends.
Edge enhancement and any "clarity" or "super resolution" setting, which paint halos around edges.

Set the backlight for your room

Backlight, or OLED Light, is the overall brightness control, and it is the one setting that is purely down to taste and your room. Turn it up in a bright room, down in a dark one, to wherever it is comfortable to look at for a couple of hours. It does not affect accuracy, so set it by feel.

Black level, then white level

These two are worth setting with a pattern rather than guessing, and the Calibration Patterns have both.

Brightness sets the black level. On a black-level pattern, raise Brightness until the near-black bars are just visible, then lower it until the darkest one merges into black. Now shadows have detail without going gray.
Contrast sets the white level. On a white-clipping pattern, raise Contrast until the brightest steps stop separating (they blend into one white), then back off until every step is distinct again. Now highlights are bright without clipping.

Sharpness and color temperature

Sharpness should be at or near zero. It does not add real detail; it adds fake edges. Most sets over-sharpen badly at the factory, so turn it right down and only nudge up if the picture looks soft.
Color temperature should be Warm (sometimes Warm2). It looks too yellow at first because you are used to a cold, blue picture, but Warm is far closer to how content is meant to look. Give it a few days.
Color and Tint are best left near default unless you have filters and patterns to set them. They are usually close enough from the factory.

Questions people ask

Do I need special equipment to calibrate my TV?

Not to make a big improvement. A colorimeter and software get you the final few percent of accuracy, but picking the right picture mode, turning off the processing, and setting black and white level by eye with test patterns fixes the large, obvious problems. That is most of the benefit for none of the cost.

What is the best picture mode?

Cinema, Movie or Filmmaker mode. They disable the showroom processing and aim for how the content was mastered. Filmmaker is the most accurate and the most restrained; Cinema or Movie is a good everyday choice. Vivid and Dynamic are built to grab attention in a shop, not to look right at home.

Why does Warm color temperature look too yellow?

Because your eyes are used to the cool, bluish picture most TVs ship with. Warm is actually the accurate setting; white content is meant to look close to it. Stick with Warm for a few days and the blue presets will start to look obviously wrong.

The Calibration Patterns give you the black-level, white-clipping, grayscale and geometry patterns to do all of this by eye. To switch motion smoothing off along the way, see the guide on the soap opera effect.