
Standard is a better choice than Vivid or Dynamic, but it's not the best. Manufacturers are required to include this picture mode in order to market a TV, but that doesn't mean you have to use it. Standard mode tends to heavily throttle light output and dynamic range in order to meet Energy Star requirements for electricity consumption. They might look great under the bright fluorescent lights of a show floor, but leaving your TV in one of these "torch" modes can shorten its life, tire your eyes, and destroy detail in the picture. They're designed for retailers, employing maximum backlight, excessive sharpening, and blue-skewed white balance. Vivid (or Dynamic) modes are what you'll see on a display TV at Best Buy or WalMart. Understanding what each mode is designed to do is a great place to start.
#Best tv calibration disc professional#
While a full-fledged calibration requires professional help (or at least professional tools), there's plenty that the average viewer can do to improve their picture.Īlmost every modern TV includes a variety of picture modes. Even if your TV arrived pre-calibrated, it would need a tune-up after a few months, meaning there's little reason to spend time and resources calibrating it at the factory. Finally, just like musical instruments tend to slip out of tune over time, so do TVs-regardless of how expensive they are. There's also a degree of accuracy required in a proper calibration that would be financially impractical at a mass-produced factory level. Most TVs look extra flashy right out of the box to compete with all the other extra flashy TVs on the showroom floor.
