How to calibrate your TV

You can get a better picture from your TV by calibrating it. Professional calibration is a time-consuming and expensive process that requires special equipment and training. Still, you can tune your TV to look better by spending as little as $30 for an experiment and taking half an hour to play with some settings. Our guide will guide you through a very basic calibration process based on Foundation for Imaging Science methods and requires no experience on your part. All you have to do is order the Spears & Munsil HD 2.0 calibration discs and follow the seven steps below.

The Spears & Munsil Disc is a useful tool for consumers who want to calibrate their TV or understand how video signals work. It was recommended by ISF founder and president Joel Silver. It comes with extensive instructions on the disc and in the accompanying booklet, but many are unnecessary. They can be ignored unless you are getting started with TV calibration.

That is a standard Blu-ray disc, so it doesn’t reach 4K resolution or provide calibration for HDR content. Spears & Munsil is putting the finishing touches on an Ultra HD Blu-ray calibration disc, which will support testing and calibration for 4K and HDR content. We’ll see that disc when it comes out, and now you can still tune your TV for better color and Contrast with your current disc.

1. Find the Best Picture Mode

You’ll get the best results by starting in the correct picture mode. That is a general mode that determines many of the individual picture settings of the TV and generally allows some higher-level options for making calibration adjustments. Ideally, your television will have an ISF picture mode, which means it provides a complete set of settings to do the full calibration (you won’t need to touch most of them; that’s for the Experts). Otherwise, look for any Cinema or Theater mode and start from there. If those are not available, look for Custom. Stay away from any Live, Game, or Sports modes.

2. Use Warmest Color Temperature Setting

Once you find a mode that looks right, look for the Color Temperature setting and make sure it’s set to Warm. That works with picture mode to produce, for most modern TVs, pretty accurate colors on the board. You can get accuracy for color levels with full RGB CMY white balance/correction, but that requires an expert calibration with special equipment. For most consumers, the warmest color temperature setting will do the job.

3. Turn off unnecessary picture features

Your TV may have several options designed to allow it to adjust picture settings to suit whatever you’re watching ideally. They have their place, but they are the cause of the calibration. It would help to make sure the test samples you are viewing are displayed with fixed settings and that the TV does not adjust them while working. In your TV’s picture settings menu, look for any submenu with sounds like Advanced Picture, Expert Picture, or Picture Preferences. Disable any features with the words Adaptive, Dynamic, Motion, Processing, or Smoothing. While you’re at it, make sure Overscan is turned off if that’s an option (this will help in the next step).

Incidentally, disabling any motion enhancement will reduce the soap opera effect that many users don’t like. Motion enhancements have their place, often in sports games or live video, but most movies and TV shows are more pleasant to watch with them turned off. Our guide to refresh rates provides a more in-depth explanation of what these modes do and whether the TV’s problem is 60, 120, or 240Hz.

4. Check image geometry

No matter how you adjust the other settings, your TV will look its best if set to display whatever you’re watching at the right aspect ratio. That can be a problem for cable boxes if you flip between HD and SD channels, but otherwise, you should be able to set everything up to display the picture at its native resolution. Look for a button on the remote or a setting in the Picture menu called Aspect Ratio, Picture Size, or Zoom. Make sure it is set to Normal or Scan Only. Don’t select anything called Wide, Zoom, 3:4, or 16:9.

You can check if the image shape is correct with the Spears & Munsil disc. Under Advanced Video, select Settings and then Framing. A prototype will appear, showing the boundaries of the different resolutions. If your TV is 1080p, the white arrows pointing to the 1920 x 1080 lines will touch the edge of the screen. If you have an ultra-high-definition TV (UHD or 4K), you can still use the 1080p lines to check the shape of your screen; they have the same ratio, and most video sources still output at 1080p, so your TV needs to be able to handle that signal correctly regardless.

5. Set Contrast

That is where the Spears & Munsil disc comes in handy. You will adjust the Brightness and Contrast settings using the PLUGE test chart on the disc. In the disc’s main menu, select Video Correction and then Contrast. Adjust the Contrast setting on your TV until the bars below 238 are distinct gray and above 238 are white. The gray boxes surrounding the ten colored squares at the top and bottom of the screen will be visible, and the gradient in the middle will slope down smoothly from a white stripe in the middle to black on the sides.

6. Set Brightness

It sounds counterintuitive, but the TV’s Brightness setting adjusts the black levels. Instantly tap your Blu-ray player’s remote to get to the Brightness test sample. Turn the TV’s Brightness setting until all four gray bars in the center are visible, then slowly turn the Brightness down until only the two on the right and the two on the left have disappeared into the background.

7. Note Your Settings

If you follow these instructions, your TV will now be calibrated and possibly without professional equipment. Skip the instructions for adjusting color or sharpness in the Edit Video menu; The vast majority of TVs sold in the last few years have those settings set to pretty solid working defaults, and trying to change them can result in picture errors.

You can check your results by going to the Demo menu and watching some video clips. They should look well-detailed in both light and shadow, with fine textures appearing distinct. Colors should look natural and not flashy or tinged with blues or pinks.

Write Picture settings, Color Temperature settings, and any features you’ve turned off, along with Brightness and Contrast levels. If you make changes in the future, you can fix any problems with the picture by resetting the TV to default settings and using your notes.