> previous page

After getting the contast and brightness right, you can now move on to the other options you’ll find in the settings menu.

Saturation (or colours)

This setting allows you to work on colour levels. The lower the saturation, the closer the film will be to black and white – or grey to be exact – and the higher it is, the brighter the colours. There is no test pattern for saturation settings. However, all you need to do is look at some very saturated objects on the image; by setting saturation too high, the colour becomes flashy takes on a fluorescent aspect (like the grass in the image below); if you set it too low, the colours become too pale. Skin colour is a good indicator of saturation settings. Too saturated and white skin apprears red, not enough and it is overly pale.
As you can see, it’s down to your eye to judge. The right settings will also be those that seem right to the viewer.


Sharpness

You can artificially increase the sharpness of an image with this setting. In contrast to other settings (brightness, contrast, colour…), you can push this setting a little beyond the ideal level: ie. the image displayed being exactly faithful to the source. Beyond this level, the image becomes more precise and seems more detailed – although in reality it isn’t. So as to get this, the TV or projector will create white bands near to dark areas, creating a very clearly demarked section. If you set it higher than this, it will make the image “hard” and artificial and even create other display problems. If you don’t set the sharpness high enough, the image will seem blurry.
So as to set it as naturally as possible, you have to observe dark areas on a grey background. The two zones should have a neutral division. If you push the sharpness too far, a white trait appears between the two areas. As we said before, setting the sharpness a little high is no bad thing as long as you stay within reasonable limits. This can, for example, give DVDs that you watch on a Full HD television a slightly more “HD” aspect.


Original image on the left, on the right the sharpness has
been set a little too high.You can see that the semi-circle
on the left seems a bit blurry if you look at it after focussing
on the image on the right.

Backlighting

This setting is specific to TVs but does nevertheless exist in another form on projectors: lamp energy consumption. The only difference between the two: the settings level. While televisions have a graduation of 5 to 20 positions, projectors only have 2 or 3 positions (Eco, normal, maximum) designed to manage energy consumption and therefore the strength of the light from the lamp. In both cases, this setting alters the brightness of the image as a whole. So as to get the right setting, you lower it until the image becomes too pale and then you increase it slowly until you get a satisfactory image. This gives you as deep a black as possible.
In a brightly lit room, you shouldn’t be shy with the backlighting. In a darker room however, low backlighting will give you nice deep blacks.

Dynamic backlighting

This is an artifice that allows you to vary the backlighting of your television depending on the type of image displayed. The darker the image, the lower the backlighting. Its effect is not always to be desired as at times you notice the changes in backlighting and the whites on darker scenes can sometimes tend towards grey. However, as with all dynamic changes – in real time that is – it changes the original image and sometimes means you lose detail. None of the televisions we have tested up to now has satisfied us in this mode. We advise you to disactivate it.

Colour temperature

Not to be confused with colour saturation. Here we’re talking about the reference whites and the greys that come from these. This is measured in Kelvins (K). The reference temperature in the world of videos is 6500K. This gives whites that are slightly red tinged or “warm” and which correspond to daylight on a sunny day. Beyond this, 7000 K and higher, they tend towards blue or “cold” colours (the tone of colour varies in inverse proportion to the colour temperature).

To obtain an image that is as natural as possible, you have to try and get close to 6500 K… not easy to obtain without a sensor. However, note that all the models we test follow the settings below, without exception: put the temperature colour setting as high as possible.