My trusty Sony Bravia died a sudden death on 23rd December – probably thanks to Eskom load-shedding or the recent lightning and spending the holidays without a TV was challenging enough, until I came across a special for a Samsung 55″ Series 7 Smart LED:
The out of the box colour calibration is shockingly bad and movies look like a cheap soapie so I needed some time to re-calibrate the TV to make it look perfect for both movies and Playstation 4 gaming:
- Display:
- Picture Mode: Movie
- Backlight: 12
- Contrast: 97
- Brightness: 46
- Sharpness: 20
- Colour: 38
- Tint: 50/50
- Advanced Picture Settings:
- Dynamic Contrast: Off
- Black Tone: Off
- Flesh Tone: 0
- RGB Only: Off
- Colour Space: Auto
- White Balance: 10 and then set R/G/B to:
- 10%: +50 +10 -50
- 20%: +29 +8 -10
- 30%: +18 +11 -2
- 40%: +16 +11 +9
- 50%: 0 +8 +7
- 60%: 0 0 +4
- 70%: -2 +1 +7
- 80%: +2 0 +7
- 90%: 0 -2 +5
- 100%: +1 +1 +7
- Gamma: -2
- Picture Options
- Colour Tone: Warm2
- Digital Clean: Off
- MPEG Noise: Off
- HDMI Black Level: Low
- Film Mode: Off
- Motion Plus: Custom
- Blur Reduction: 3
- Judder Reduction: 2
- LED Clear Motion: Off
- Cinema Black: Low
The above settings come close to what I had on my Sony and movies look more natural. The factory settings made anything look like it was filmed with a handy-cam and makes me wonder why TV manufacturers do not have a show-room default (for all the vibrant demos) and then the actual real-world configuration such as the one above.