Your TV likely has a host of picture presets (some of which definitely do not look good). To be fair, they partly depend on what you’re watching, with the lighting conditions in the room also playing an important role. Finding the best mode for your purposes can significantly improve your experience, and if you get lucky, you could find the perfect setting with one click.
Picture modes are preset configurations that adjust multiple display settings at once to optimize for specific purposes. Out of the box, TVs are often set to a default picture mode like Standard or Dynamic. Dynamic mode tends to boost brightness, clarity, and color saturation (similar to Vivid mode mentioned above), while Standard mode aims for a balanced, neutral picture suitable for various types of content.
Finding the best picture mode for your preferences and environment might depend on whether you’re watching a film or playing a video game, or watching sports. Many TVs have picture modes for those media specifically — simply called Gaming and Sports.
For the former, your video game console will handle the visual rendering while the Gaming mode shuts down the TV’s video processing to deliver the shortest lag times. The Sports picture option is the one mode where you might benefit from enabling Motion Smoothing, which is designed to reduce motion blur and duplication artifacts.
Most models include a Movie or Cinema mode, which is designed for viewing in a dark, theatre-like environment. As a fairly new option, some manufacturers are offering Filmmaker mode, an industry-standard setting that focuses on preserving the director’s original artistic vision.
It works on the (usually accurate) assumption that the movie was crafted with color adjustments and other fine-tuning, so the film is presented without alteration. Filmmaker mode, like Game mode, strips away additional video processing, allowing viewers to experience the movie as it was originally meant to be seen in the theater.
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