After a 7-year corporate stint, Tanveer found his love for writing and tech too much to resist. An MBA in Marketing and the owner of a PC building business, he writes on PC hardware, technology, and Windows. When not scouring the web for ideas, he can be found building PCs, watching anime, or playing Smash Karts on his RTX 3080 (sigh).
The TV is one of the most important devices in any home, as it's the central piece of an entertainment hub. Having a high-quality panel and sound system is crucial to a satisfying home theater experience, but using your TV's default settings can easily ruin your experience. It still boggles my mind how the average consumer is expected to know which settings to disable on a new TV before they can enjoy it to the fullest.
Whenever I'm setting up a new TV for myself or anyone in my family, I make it a point to turn off a handful of settings. Even before I download the necessary apps or sign in to any accounts, I ensure these features are sent back to where they came from. They have no place on the vast majority of modern TVs, and you should disable them if you haven't done it already.
Smooth Motion should be the first thing to go
No one wants to see fake high-FPS content
The most derided setting on TVs deserves the first mention on this list. Smooth Motion, Motion Clarity, TruMotion, Motionflow, Motion Enhancement, or Motion Control are just different names for the same "feature." It's the setting responsible for the soap opera effect that you see on most TVs. It artificially makes content smoother by adding additional frames to, say, a 24fps scene to deliver a 60fps output.
Everything appears unnatural since the content that was shot at a lower framerate is now playing at a higher one. If you care about preserving the original vision of the filmmaker, it's best to disable motion smoothing on your brand-new TV. You can find this setting typically in the advanced section of the Picture settings. I suggest turning it off or setting it to Low or the lowest setting available on your TV.
Adaptive Brightness is more annoying than helpful
I can do without the software's interference
Automatic, adaptive, or dynamic brightness is meant to intelligently adjust your panel's brightness level based on the ambient lighting. However, what it does in reality is make your TV unusually dim when watching a movie in a dark room, resulting in a hazy picture and ruining whatever experience the scene meant to create. In a well-lit room, it might blow the brightness levels out of proportion.
Adaptive brightness artificially limits your high-quality TV's brightness, putting a hard limit on its HDR experience. If the screen can't get bright enough to deliver fantastic highlights, you won't get what you paid for. Disabling the setting altogether is the only way to allow your panel to stretch its wings. You'll find the setting in the Energy, Power, or Device settings on your TV.
Energy Saving does almost nothing
It certainly doesn't save your viewing experience
Energy saver or Eco modes on TVs are similar to Auto Brightness in the sense that they can cap your panel's brightness to save power. The result is that any time a scene demands the most out of your panel, it holds itself back instead of pulling out all the stops. You're left with a middling experience as you wonder why your high-end model doesn't look like it's supposed to.
TV manufacturers love to enable the Eco Mode by default to satisfy global energy-efficiency mandates. While this may pull back your energy bill infinitesimally (modern TVs aren't power guzzlers), it randomly decides to limit your panel's brightness levels. Turning it off is the way to go if you don't want your TV's subpar software doing any more thinking than it needs to. Again, you can find it in your TV's Power, Device, or System settings.
Automatic Content Recognition (ACR) is one of the worst
I never consented to data harvesting
ACR has been in the news again due to reports of LG TVs spying on their users. Well, this kind of hidden monitoring has been going on for years, and LG isn't the only guilty company. TV manufacturers use ACR to automatically record your watching habits, and this data is then sold to third-party companies or used to send you targeted ads. Your privacy may be maintained, but it's a type of surveillance you never signed up for.
When I'm setting up a new TV, this is one of the first settings I disable. I have an Apple TV 4K at home, so ACR isn't a problem on it, but most other brands are actively looking to harvest your data. I know this may not be news to everyone, but you may still have the setting turned on. It's typically located in the System or Privacy settings of your TV and might be called Viewing Information Services, Live Plus, Interactive TV Settings, or Use Info from TV Inputs.
Surround Sound surrounds nothing
It's probably making your audio worse, if anything
It may seem that turning on Surround Sound on your TV is the better choice, but most TVs aren't equipped to deliver a half-decent surround sound experience. They don't have the necessary hardware to simulate virtual surround sound well enough. Most people aren't using their TV's onboard speakers, so leaving Surround Sound on in the TV's settings can interfere with the soundbar or speakers, making things worse.
There's a chance your TV is an exception to the rule and delivers a great surround sound experience from its own speakers. Most people, however, are better off disabling it and relying completely on their external soundbar or speakers. You can find the setting in the Audio section, usually under Sound Mode or Advanced.
It's important to get your TV settings right the first time
If you go with the default setup on a new TV, it might be hard to find the time to configure it properly later. We lead busy lives and rarely have the time or patience to diagnose a subpar audio or video experience. Most people make peace with their TV's default settings and continue to miss out on a great viewing experience. Disabling a few settings takes a few minutes, but it delivers great dividends.