If you aren't changing these settings on your new TV, then you weren't getting anywhere close to the best picture quality or viewing experience it's capable of. So, in just a matter of minutes, we're going to have your TV looking and working its absolute best. Hey everyone, Chris Hagan here, and we've been hearing this from every TV brand for years.
The research shows most folks never touch even the most basic settings on their TV. It comes straight out of the box, gets set up, and, well, that's it. And look, I don't blame you.
Like a kid on Christmas, it's fun to just break into your new toy, but it is a shame that most don't take the time to make a few easy changes. Because with just a few minutes of clicking some buttons, you can transform how your TV's picture looks and make it easier to use. Today, we're going to show you seven settings you need to change on your Samsung TV to get the very best picture, no matter what your preference might be, and exactly how to do it step by step.
The first thing you need to know is that all TVs now ship with an Eco setting turned on by default. And as much as we want to help the environment, there are probably more effective ways to do this than limiting the brightness and contrast of your TV. It's like buying a high-performance sports car, but the acceleration and top speed are capped at 40 mph.
So, on a Samsung TV, what you want to do is press the settings button on your remote, go to All Settings, then navigate down to General & Privacy, then Power and Energy Saving, and toggle Energy Saving Solution off. And while you're here, go ahead and turn off Brightness Optimization as well. You should know that many TVs now come with optical sensors that can detect how bright your room is and how warm or cold that light may be.
The TV then adjusts the picture automatically, supposedly optimizing brightness and color temperature accordingly. The thing is, this feature doesn't always work well and can even do more harm than good. So, let's turn this off to ensure that your TV won't be making any brightness or color decisions for you, especially if you're in a room that allows a bit of light in and there's periods of bright sun and then clouds and things like that.
So, with those critical settings under your control now, let's select a picture mode. We'll need to be in an app to do this, so I'll use YouTube. Press the settings button on your remote, then navigate right to Picture Mode.
We like modes like Cinema, Movie, or Filmmaker, but if you prefer a cooler or more blue color temperature, you might like Standard best. We suggest staying away from things like Vivid, labeled Dynamic on Samsung, or Sports, as these tend to juice things up a bit too much and look harsh and blown out. Next, you want to set the brightness of your TV to what you like.
Some folks like a brighter setting for watching during the day, while others don't need as much brightness if they watch mostly at night. If you do a little bit of both, you can set different brightness levels for two different picture modes and switch between them as you like. The trick here is to recognize that sometimes you'll be watching SDR, or Standard Dynamic Range content, while other times you may be watching in HDR, High Dynamic Range, and you'll want to set the brightness for both.
So, on a Samsung TV, within any app, not playing a video yet, set the brightness for SDR content by going into your settings quick menu, then navigate right to Picture Setup or Brightness, whichever one you see there. You'll find your brightness, obviously, and you can adjust it to your liking. You can also go into the All Settings menu, then Picture, then Expert Settings, and do the same.
Now, for HDR, we just need to play some HDR content. This could be a show on Netflix or a YouTube video. I'll use one of our preferred YouTube channels, run by Eugene Bsky, who produces beautiful HDR content.
You just need to make sure that whatever you're using is indeed in HDR, which should be in the description. I'll press the settings button on the remote, then navigate to Brightness or Picture Setup, and you'll notice I had my SDR brightness at 39 and HDR maxed out to 50. I'll have more on that in a moment.
There is also one more thing you can do to make your Samsung TV even brighter, if you want. That would be the Local Dimming setting. You get to it by pressing the settings button on your remote, then selecting All Settings, then Picture, then Expert Settings, and navigating down to Local Dimming.
Now, you can experiment with this by turning it to Low, Standard, or High. Set to Low, the brightness will be lower, but you will get less blooming and halo around bright objects on dark backgrounds. But set to Standard or High, you'll get more brightness from your TV, which can be great for watching during the day.
Once you've adjusted Local Dimming, go back to that HDR content we were playing and check your brightness. Notice that it's probably turned all the way up. We recommend keeping it this way so that all the little bright highlights have lots of sparkle, but if it's too much for you when watching at night, you can go ahead and turn it down here.
Finally, let's talk about motion smoothing. Some people like it, but some feel like it makes everything look weird or fake or like a soap opera. We're not here to tell you what you should like; we just want to show you how to change it so your picture looks the way you want it to.
To adjust the motion smoothing on a Samsung TV, go back to the Expert Settings we found earlier and navigate down to Picture Clarity Settings. Now, you can turn this off entirely, or you can reduce how severe the effect is by turning Blur Reduction and Judder Reduction down to a lower setting. Experiment with this a little bit, and you may find you don't want it for movies but you actually like how it makes your TV look for sports.
The decision is in your hands because you just took a few minutes to customize your TV and get the most out of it. So now that we've got your Samsung TV's picture dialed in, let's talk about a couple of other settings that can make using your TV just a little bit easier and more convenient. During the initial setup of your Samsung TV, the TV should have asked you to connect your devices so they could be recognized.
This should have set up your Samsung TV's remote to control the basic functions of those devices. But if you skipped that part, or if you've added a new device since then, or if you're just having trouble with the TV turning your stuff on or off, you should know about the HDMI CEC setting. On a Samsung TV, this is called Anynet+ (HDMI-CEC).
You get to it by clicking the settings button on your remote, then navigating down to Connection, then External Device Manager, and now you can turn it on or off. With it on, for example, I can now control my soundbar volume and even navigate my PlayStation's main menu with the TV remote. The moral of the story is, when you buy a new TV, yeah, it's going to look good, but it can look even better.
And especially if you're ever underwhelmed by the picture after hearing the hype around a certain TV, it's 100% worth diving into the settings to dial it in and see what all the hype is truly about. And I'd say even if you're watching this video on a TV that's a few years old and you've never looked into the settings we just talked about, now is as good a time as any to see if there's more to the TV that you never knew about. As always, thank you so much for watching this video.
We really do hope you find it helpful when it comes to dialing in your Samsung TV. Be sure to like and subscribe for more content like this. Also, feel free to send this video to a friend if you think they could use it too.
And if you're not a Samsung user or have an additional TV brand in the house that you want to dial in, don't worry—we'll be making these videos across the board to help as many people as possible.
