So you can calibrate your TV to have the best image

[OyaYansa]

Surely it will also happen to you: while you were looking for the one that ended up being your next TV, all the manufacturers assured you that with your TV model you would obtain the best image quality, the brightest colors and the sharpest details you could have seen never on a television. What many people do not know is that there is a way to squeeze a hundred percent the possibilities of that Samsung, LG or Sony TV that you have bought.

If when you install your brand new Smart TV in your home the result is not as spectacular or the colors as vibrant as promised, do not think that you have been cheated, it is simply that the panel of your TV needs to be calibrated to get the best performance. Here we will show you how to calibrate your television to have the best image.

The basic calibration process for your TV is simple and consists of adjusting the values of brightness, contrast, sharpness and saturation of the screen to get it to show colors as accurate as possible to what the creators of the contents that will be shown in the screen have set. The only thing you will need is a downloadable file (we will link it to you next) that you will have to copy to an external memory to transfer it to the TV.

That way, when a film shows a seascape, you will see with the same tone and intensity indicated by the creator of the content. Neither more greenish, nor more bluish. Consider this article as the guide to put your TV to point (it does not matter if you bought it a week or a year ago) and thus guarantee that the image quality it offers expresses one hundred percent of its potential.

One moment, why is not a device as expensive as a TV set calibrated from the factory?

Actually, the television is calibrated at the factory, what happens is that these parameters may not fit exactly your taste and may show an image too muted or too saturated colors. It has not happened to you that, when installing the TV in house, you have realized that the colors are not as showy as in the store?

The lighting of the room in which the television is installed, the different sources of the images, the angle at which it is seen and even the perception of colors by the user varies, so it is necessary to adjust the parameters again to the new visualization environment.

Do you know that you can watch Netflix on your old TV with an Android TV Box?

It is more than likely that your TV already brings different pre-set color settings (cinema, dynamic, multimedia, natural, sports, etc.) to the factory. These settings have been configured to try to show the best image quality when viewing the different contents.

1. First you need to download a calibration pattern, the key to calibrate your TV
The calibration patterns for the TV are a set of visual patterns of colors and lines that combine to obtain the correct adjustment of the different parameters of your TV.

Thanks to these calibration patterns you will get your TV show the full range of colors accurately and with the right intensity, avoiding creating color aberrations or making you lose part of the content because the colors are too dark or too light.

There are many forms and patterns of calibration, from static images, to videos in which the different patterns of adjustment are reproduced. You can even play them from YouTube!

This variety responds to each input connection of your TV manages the color differently, so it may be necessary to reproduce the calibration pattern from your Bluray player, from the console or from a USB to fine-tune the calibration of your television

In our case we have opted for the AVS HD709 calibration patterns pack that you can download for free from its official forum.

After choosing the right format for your player or for the format you are going to use, you just have to show the different patterns on the screen and adjust the indicated parameters to improve the image quality of your TV.

2. Start calibrating your TV: turn it off
One of the first things that you must do before starting the calibration of your TV screen is to return to the factory settings and disable all those functions and improvements that alter the reproduction of the image or that scale its resolution since otherwise They would be altering the actual panel setting. You can always reconnect it when you finish so that they act on a correct basis of adjustments.

Therefore, it disables the scaling filters and postprocessing systems of the TV (you will find them in the setting menus with names such as Overscan, Motionflow, Trumotion, etc.).

In addition, you will need to have the average lighting you usually have when you watch TV, so if your TV allows you to store different adjustment profiles, maybe you should set one for the day and another for the night.

During the adjustment, you must also maintain the distance and position that you usually have. That is, if you tend to see it from a certain angle and sitting 3 meters away, put yourself in that place and not stuck to the screen while you calibrate it.

The top 5 TVs of 2017 high-end
Once all the extras have been deactivated, you can choose any of the modes to start from a certain base, although if you prefer you can do it from scratch. We do not recommend sports or dynamic modes because they alter the result too much. Better choose the cinema mode, normal or natural and adjust them to your liking.

3. Adjust the scaling of your screen
Currently different resolutions for the content coexist. For example, television is broadcast in HD, video on demand platforms do so in Full HD, and certain content may be available in Ultra HD (4K).

For this reason, the current televisions have scaling systems that readjust the size of the image to adapt it to the screen. One of the first adjustments you will make to calibrate your screen will be to use one of the calibration standards of AVS HD709 that we have indicated before to verify that your TV is not cutting the content that is shown on the screen.

In particular, you should use the so-called Sharpness & Overscan that you will find in the Basic Settings folder of this pattern pack. This calibration pattern shows blue frames around the image that indicate the degree of clipping that is being applied to the image.

Adjust the screen with the scaling control until it fits in the Overscan 0 mark and the white line appears around it. With this setting we make sure that the screen does not crop the images and shows all the content in full size.

4. Adjust the brightness and contrast of the screen
The next adjustment you will make will be the one of brightness and contrast. To calibrate the brightness of the screen, use the Black Clipping calibration pattern. This setting allows us to determine the depth of the darker colors so that the blacks have more depth without sacrificing the intermediate gray tones.

A brightness setting that is too high causes the colors to appear very washed since blacks will not go dark gray, while a brightness that is too low causes many nuances in the colors to be lost due to the loss of richness in the gradient.

Displaying the calibration pattern Black Clipping adjusts the brightness values until you see a minimal difference between bars 16 and 17 that blink in this pattern.

Once you have set the brightness values of your TV to show the purest blacks and the different gray scales, it is time to do the same with the lighter tones, setting the white level. If we set the contrast level too high, the lighter areas of the image will be saturated, losing all the detail. On the other hand, if you leave it too low, the brightness of the colors and its intensity will be lost, resulting in an unnatural and muted image.

To calibrate the contrast of your TV, play the White Clipping pattern and modify the contrast values in the TV settings menu until you notice a slight difference between bars 234 and 235.

Check if the brightness and contrast adjustment of your TV is correct by opening the APL Clipping calibration pattern, in which both settings are displayed simultaneously. If you can see all the black and white tones up to the reference point (bar 235 for white and 16 for black), it means that the calibration was successful.

5. Get sharper images on your TV
The sharpness controls the detail of the content we see on the screen. The new Full HD and UHD panels allow levels of definition never seen, so this adjustment gains greater relevance as it will give more definition to the images.

Setting a level of sharpness too low makes images and texts appear blurry and ill-defined, while adjusting it to the maximum causes aberrations to appear at the edges of the image, such as the Moiré effect that creates unwanted visual effects.

To calibrate the sharpness of your television, use the Sharpness & Overscan calibration pattern again. In its central part different black and white patterns are shown. Adjust the sharpness value of your TV until all the patterns of horizontal, vertical lines and texts appear clearly and without creating additional optical effects.

6. Get more natural colors
Another key factor in calibrating your TV will be the color adjustment. This setting controls the intensity and saturation with which the screen displays the colors. A screen with too saturated colors will lose part of the spectrum of colors, subtracting details and nuances to the images.

In the folder Misc Patterns of the calibration patterns of AVS HD709 you will find two patterns that you will find especially useful to calibrate this parameter.

On the one hand, it reproduces the Color Clipping pattern that you will find in the A-Additional folder. As you did with the contrast and brightness patterns, this calibration pattern shows you the correct adjustment of the different color tones. Modify the color values until you can appreciate the subtle difference between the bar 233 and the pure color of reference that is represented in the bar 235. If you do not appreciate differences between the different bars it means that the color in which it is not appreciated is too saturated .

If you prefer you can also use the Color Steps pattern to make sure that you can see all the lighting steps in each color and adjust the color tint so that it does not tend towards green, red or blue. If in any of the colors you stop seeing differences in the first or last steps, it means that the saturation adjustment must be adjusted again to a different value.

7. Confirm the calibration of your TV
To ensure that the calibration of your TV is appropriate, you just have to play content on it and see for yourself if the quality is right and all the details of dark scenes are appreciated.

Another trick to check the correct calibration of the colors of your TV is to overcome "the Simpsons test". The po[CENSORED]r animated series starring Homer Simpson and his family consists of flat colors perfectly defined by a black outline.

If the color saturation is not correct, the saturated color will invade the contour area, signaling that this setting is too high. On the other hand, this same outline will serve to establish if you have gone over the line with the adjustment of the sharpness since it will be too jagged or with a white halo. Who was going to tell you that The Simpsons were going to help you calibrate your TV!

The best TV and sound bars and speakers of 2017
After checking that the basic calibration of your TV is correct, and having saved all the settings, it is time to activate (if you want) one by one the different filters and postprocesses that you have disabled at the beginning. It is advisable to do it one by one and check the effect it has on the quality of the image you have set up since, in some cases, the abuse of these filters can ruin the viewing quality instead of improving it.

Why calibrate a television? To have the best image quality
Regarding the calibration of the TV screen, each user has a different perception of colors, so there is no magic formula in which to establish what value should be set in this or that adjustment because, as we say, It depends on the combination of the type of screen technology used by the television, the lighting in the room and the perception of the viewer.

Calibrating a television also depends on the use that is going to be given to it. As a general rule, for a TV set for home use, it will be sufficient to show certain adjustment patterns on the screen and modify the parameters until the levels of color, brightness and contrast are correctly seen. Something that should not take more than 5 minutes.

On the other hand, if the television is going to have a professional use, the colors shown must be precise and the screen must be calibrated by a professional using colorimeters and specific programs that adjust with greater precision.