How to do a basic TV calibration?

orangecat · January 27, 2017

So my girlfriend has this crappy 32 inch TV so we decided to use it in the bedroom but it looks like total crap. the black level is to bright the whites are too bright and the gamma is way off. Everything just looks washed out.

I tried to adjust the brightness and contrast settings but it really didn't help much. I set colour temp to warm and it helped the colour look more like my computer monitor but its still off.

Anyone know of a way to calibrate a TV with hardly any menu controls? I have brightness, contrast, colour, colour temp and sharpness.

Daniel644 · January 27, 2017

it helps to start with a disc, I have the Bluray for the Extended edition of Terminator 2 and it has a THX thing in it that will guide you through setting Brightness and contrast and sharpness and color, you can use it to get it close, there are other versions of similar DVD/blurays floating around the internet if you google it, here is one that is legitimately free http://lifehacker.com/5858625/how-to-calibrate-your-hdtv-and-boost-your-video-quality-in-30-minutes-or-less

just remember some TV's simply aren't very good, like if you have a Samsung in your living room and go to an IPS panel LG TV the black levels are going to be total GARBAGE on the LG compared to the Samsung and cheaper brands will suffer from color banding and other issues that make it next to impossible to get things looking good.

Personally I start with brightness around 50% and contrast up into the 90's (on a 0 to 100 scale) and go from there, also if you have a BACKLIGHT setting that will also effect the brightness/contrast settings, personally i've never used gamma settings to tune, if a TV is that bad out of the box then take it back.