TUTORIAL: How to calibrate the image on our Smart TV or monitor

Today we will explain in a simple way in this article how to calibrate our TV or monitor, be it Smart TV or computer screen to get the most out of our Android TV-Box or mini PC. We will see how to best adjust the colour, contrast, black / white scale and how to verify the results easily. A complementary manual to our Smart TV or monitor configuration guide. We hope you find it useful and get the most out of your hardware.

Check our list of the best Android TV-Box and mini PC that we recommend.

Table of Contents

TV FIRST SETUP

General settings

Before calibrating our TV or monitor to get the maximum performance you have to take several points into account.

Before calibrating we must have our TV set correctly for the content we want to watch.
The contents can be viewed differently depending on the lighting in the room.
The LED backlight system prevents full blacks.

General settings TV calibration

All factory TVs come with very striking default modes with exaggerated colours, image processing and smoothing of movements that make you lose a lot of quality compared to the original image with which the content has been recorded. We recommend below some basic practices.

Disable any AUTOMATIC image quality mode.
Disable MOTION FLOW, MOTION MOTION, MOTION PLUS or similar modes.
Disable improvements for BLACK, WHITE, CONTRAST, SKIN, FILM or similar.
Set the colour mode to NEUTRAL.
Increase BRIGHTNESS and CONTRAST to the maximum and then adjust to lower if it bothers us at night.

BRIGHTNESS ADJUSTMENT

The brightness is a key point when observing the details of the image on the screen, if we have it too high we will lose definition due to saturation and if we have it to low we will have objects that will not be defined in the scene.

To adjust the brightness the best option is to raise it to the maximum, then we go down until the 1% bar is almost imperceptible.
Download the templates to calibrate your TV, DO NOT USE IMAGE ON THE WEB.

CONTRAST ADJUSTMENT

The contrast allows us to have a differentiated range between the ends of grey to white, it is important to know that we have the entire range on the screen, and we do not lose the blank ends that usually give us nuances.

Adjust the contrast until the bars between 75% and 98% are visible, the bar at 99% level may disappear.
Download the templates to calibrate your TV, DO NOT USE IMAGE ON THE WEB.

COLOR ADJUSTMENT

Before adjusting this section brightness and contrast must be well calibrated, this section is also subjective depending on how we can like the image aspect at cold (bluish) or warm (red) level, if we have excessive color the image will saturate.

Adjust the color until the 99% Blue bar is barely noticeable, the rest of the colors are not important.
Download the templates to calibrate your TV, DO NOT USE IMAGE ON THE WEB.

CHECK CALIBRATION AND RESOLUTION

As we have explained on more occasions, the resolution of the Android system environment is different from the resolution at which see the video played on our TV, which will be the native if we have it correctly configured and supports that resolution. Many times we see the confusion between the Android environment being viewed at 1080p or 720p with the actual resolution at which the video is viewed.

Check FullHD and 4K resolution

To check the native resolution in the video playback we leave a couple of videos that show us the real resolution at which the content is reproduced on the screen.

We have to check that the lines and points of the control grids are perfectly defined.
Download videos to check 4K or FullHD resolution, DO NOT USE WEB PICTURE.

PROBLEMS WITH IMAGE AND SOUND

We are going to list in a simple way what problems are common in the configuration of the system.

The white colors look yellowish
– We may have poorly selected the color range on our screen, between 4: 4: 4. 4: 2: 2 and 4: 2: 0.
Gray areas on white screen.
– The display backlight system may be defective.
Green colors on screen.
– We may have selected an unsupported or problematic screen mode.
No sound
– Read our Multi Channel audio Guide for more info.