Product Face-Offs
Test date: March 02, 2009
- heat up the neon, the lamp, or the tube which never give their maximum straight away.
- get your eyes used to the lighting display conditions. In dark rooms, you’ll need around quarter of an hour for the rhodopsin to form in your eye and night vision to kick in. This is why when you adjust the settings in a dark room, they always seem too dark when you turn the lights on.
Keep this in mind for the days following adjustment of the settings.
Before getting started on your settings, try moving your TV into film mode. It’s usually called either Cinema or Film, in contrast to Intense, Standard or Normal modes that are often the default mode.
Once you’ve done this, you’ll be able to move onto the settings, looking first at the contrast and brightness. These are two concepts that you’ll have to understand if you want to get your settings right! Let’s have another look at what these terms mean:
- Contrast: this setting differenciates between the lighter shades in the image. Increasing the contrast gives you a more energetic image by increasing the brightness of light tones. This is only true to a certain extent though. If you go too far, the contrast causes these tones to disappear into a general whiteness. You lose detail and the image becomes very hard.
- Brightness: contrary to what you might think, the brightness setting actually works most on the darker shades of the image. The higher you set the brightness, the more the dark shades become visible. You might think "Great, I’m going to push the brightness right up so as to see all those details that I miss in dark films… Alien for example!"; but no, you’ll be disappointed, for two reasons. Firstly, if you set the brightness too high, the blacks tend towards grey and the image seems washed out. Next, films are deliberately made for some parts of the screen to remain dark, giving the atmosphere the director is looking for.
And this is the whole point of getting the settings right… so that you can watch a film as its director desired.
In practice
These few explanations should help inform you on how to get the settings right on your TV or projector. There is however an even simpler more precise method you can use. Look through your DVDs for a film with the THX label. You’ll probably find it on the box. Such a film will detail the contrast and brightness settings you need. What’ll probably be the most difficult task is finding the menu that details these settings.
In our example, we use a Star Wars DVD. All Star Wars DVDs have these display settings in the languages and sub-titles menu. If you move the cursor with the remote, you’ll see the THX Optimizer logo. Click on OK to validate.
Getting the contrast right
A welcome screen is displayed. Select the video tests. A new screen explains how to set the constrast display that is then shown on your screen. Run the test to show the test pattern. You’ll then come to this screen:
Increase the contrast until the last two squares (the lightest) wash into each other, then reduce it bit by bit and stop when the two squares are distinct. The contast is then at the right setting! With LCD TVs, this setting is often good by default and doesn’t need changing.
Get the brightness setting right
Click on the access button for the next chapter. The brightness setting explanation screen appears. Run the test to show the test pattern:
The best way to get this setting right is to look as the grey squares at the top and bottom of the screen. Lower the brightness until you can no longer see the 6 lightest squares and then increase it bit by bit until you can only just make out the 7th.
We have however noticed that the THX test patterns tend to push brightness too high. It is always possible to lower it a bit so as to only make out the 6th square – this is also a question of taste…
Return to the contrast settings by pressing the Previous chapter button on the remote several times and, if need be, adjust the contrast again, then the brightness again. You can then find the other test patterns if you want to or go back to the main menu to watch your film at the best settings.
Settings that depend on lighting in your roomGetting your screen settings right (2/3)
