All TVs now come with a menu of picture modes with names such as “vivid,” “natural,” “sports,” and “cinema.” When you select one, the brightness, contrast, and sharpness are adjusted to preset values.
Our advice: Don’t choose “sports” mode for watching sports—or anything else. That could artificially boost brightness, contrast, and colors, and turn on motion smoothing (more on that below). Stay away from the “vivid” and “dynamic” modes, too. They tend to overemphasize contrast and sharpness, and lower the brightness to less-than-optimal levels.
Instead, we’ve found that modes with names like “natural,” “cinema,” and “movie” generally provide the best results. If your TV has a Filmmaker Mode, try it. It’s the mode that gets most TVs closest to our own calibrated settings.
