IT’S Christmas Day! So give yourself the gift of a beautiful picture on your telly.
Whether you’re watching festive flicks on an old set or a brand new model you’ve just unwrapped, you can make some easy upgrades to make those movies shine. Just as Santa intended.
Many of us simply turn the telly on and never touch the settings.
And some of us do tinker with TV settings – but in all the wrong ways.
Here are three settings that you’ll definitely want to check today before we all sit down for a post-dinner film.
ENERGY SAVER
This is the silent killer that everyone forgets.
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Modern TVs rightly come with energy-saving modes, and sometimes these are on by default.
It might be called Energy Saver or Power Efficiency or something else similar.
And the idea is that it reduces your energy bills – albeit with a catch.
They usually deliver this by reducing one or more of your TV’s capabilities.
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And the main change is usually to dim the overall brightness of your screen.
That doesn’t just make it darker, it also reduces the breadth of contrast, colour, how vivid the image is, and more.
TV makers go to great lengths to deliver nice screens with high maximum brightness.
But it all goes to waste with Energy Saver mode on.
And that means you won’t be able to watch the movie as it was intended by its creators, who were certainly not producing the movie on Energy Saver displays.
So for Christmas Day, consider turning it off so you can enjoy movies in their full glory.
And then you can leave it on the rest of the time.
MOTION SMOOTHING
Another quiet movie-killer is a feature called Motion Smoothing.
Although on your TV, it might have a different name like Smooth Movement or Motion Interpolation.
It’s not always bad, but it’s not ideal for movies.
When you’re watching something on your TV, you’re actually just seeing a series of images shown extremely quickly.
The rate at which your TV can replace the images is called the refresh rate.
So if a TV has a 60Hz screen, it can refresh the image you’re seeing 60 times every second.
And these high refresh rates are brilliant if you’re watching something fast-paced with a high frame rate to match like sports.
But Hollywood films are often produced at 24 frames per second, which creates a visual mismatch that we’ve grown to love over the years.
This cinematic look is what we’re all used to after years of watching movies.
However, some TVs use Motion Smoothing to artificially bring footage up to 60 frames per second.
It does this by using computer guesswork to insert fake frames.
FIX YOUR AUDIO TOO!
Here’s a handy trick for Christmas Day…
Christmas Day might mean spending time with the whole family.
And everyone’s hearing can vary wildly – so you might have someone at home who struggles to catch on to dialogue.
The good news is that most TVs have audio settings that let you fix this.
They’ll usually have an audio setting that will let you isolate spoken words.
It might be called something like Dialogue Boost or Improve Speech.
Turn that on and you’ll hopefully find that everyone can hear all the words – especially over the Christmas chatter.
And don’t forget subtitles too…
But this creates what naysayers called a “soap opera” effect that ruins the visuals.
Tom Cruise, Martin Scorsese and Christopher Nolan have all moaned about it.
So switch it off if you’re settling down for a proper movie.
FILMMAKER MODE
Lastly, lots of top TV brands now offer a feature called Filmmaker Mode.
It’s created by a certification body called the UHD Alliance to show off movies as their creators intended – hence the name.
And it’s a sort of catch-all for settings that quickly sets your TV up for a movie.
“Modern televisions have all kinds of incredible possibilities in terms of their technical capabilities,” said Oppenheimer director Christopher Nolan, in a promo for Filmmaker Mode.
“But that also means that we need to be sure that the original intent of the filmmaker is carried through to the presentation.”
And Martin Scorsese (who directed Goodfellas and The Wolf of Wall Street), said: “Most people are watching these classic films at home rather than movie theaters.
“And the filmmaker mode is of particular importance when presenting these films, which have specifications unique to being shot on film.
“Including the size of the frame, their aspect ratios, their approach to light and shadow, to color or black and white.
“In each case, absolutely specific and unique to the given film. Filmmaker mode is a long overdue and welcome innovation.”
And you won’t be surprised to learn that it also turns Motion Smoothing off.
You can find on loads of TV models, including televisions from BenQ, Hisense, LG, Panasonic, Philips, Samsung, and Vizio.
