Hi, I'm Steve and today I want to show
you how to optimize the picture settings
on Sony's A9G OLED TVs. Okay, so we're
going to go into the picture settings
menu and we're going to change the
picture mode from "standard", which is the
way the set came from the factory, to
"custom", and "custom" is not only the most
accurate setting but also gives you
access to the most controls for picture
brightness. That's going to depend on
your own personal taste and also the
amount of light you have in your room, so
right now this is set to max. I usually
set a TV up for viewing in a dimly lit
or dark room, so I'm gonna back this down
to about 20. So the color setting is at
50, which is the default setting right in
the middle, and the color settings in
this TV and most TVs are pretty accurate
right out of the box so I'm going to
leave that alone. The light sensor is...
there's a sensor in the screen that
picks up the amount of light that's in
your room, and it actually adjusts the
brightness of the screen. I try to avoid
having active processing going on having
the picture changing on an active basis,
so this is something that I'm going to
turn off. Okay, now we'll go to the
advanced settings brightness. We've
already set contrast at 90 --- that's
about right. You want it to be almost
maxed out, particularly if you're gonna
be watching a lot of HDR content. Gamma I
usually set at 0, which for most TVs
that's 2.2, which is that's the industry
standard that movies are mastered at.
Black level at 50 is fine, black adjust
and advanced contrast enhancer are both
kind of contrast and black level
enhancing software. It's processing, and
you really generally don't need it,
especially on a set this good, so I'm
going to leave both of these off. Peak
luminance refers to the brightness, and
in general you want to maximize
brightness as much as possible. Again,
especially for HDR content, so I am going
to bump this to high.
Now, moving to color again, the color and
the hue settings are fine straight out
of the box. Color temperature "Expert 1",
that's a very accurate setting so I'm
going to leave that. Advanced color
temperature is something that really you
can only adjust if you have the right
kind of instrument, an actual color
imager. For sharpness, the setting of 50
is the default setting, which is kind of
neutral or zero. You rarely need to add
any sharpness on current TVs. Reality
creation is also kind of designed to
improve the look of lower resolution
material, so unless you're watching a lot
of material that's below HD quality
I would probably turn this off. Okay, so
here we're getting into other features
that improve the quality of lower
resolution material. Random noise
reduction is for analog noise, and
so I'm gonna leave that off. Digital
noise reduction is more to do with, like,
the kind of compression artifacts that
you get watching streamed content like
Netflix or Amazon. Picture blocking and
and that sort of thing. Again, I'm gonna
leave that off because most of the feeds
now from Amazon and Netflix, particularly
their 4K feeds, the noise is very low.
Smooth gradation has to do with color
banding, and that's something I see most
often, like with sky, and this smooth
gradation will help with that, but like
these other features they do reduce
noise but they also sometimes reduce
fine details. So for smooth gradation I'm
going to turn that off as well. If you're
watching something and you're noticing
some banding, then you can go ahead and
turn on smooth gradation, it actually
does a really good job. Alright, now we
come to motion and "Motionflow" is Sony's
brand of motion control features, and
it's it's one of the best in the
business.
So you have a couple of different
settings. The custom setting gives
you access to these other features, I
mean, you can just turn Motionflow off,
but when you have custom settings then you
can go to smoothness. Smoothness is the
actual motion interpolation. It can help
with blur
and judder, but that can also sometimes
create the "soap opera effect". The
clearness feature is something called
black frame insertion on TVs. Oddly
enough, one way to make motion look
smoother is to introduce, you know, rapid
flicker, and that's just the way our eye-brain visual systems work.
The Cinemotion feature controls judder,
which is a little different from motion
blur. I'm gonna start out with it off and
then if that's something that you see,
you know, when you're watching movies.
Then you can switch it back on. So as far
as HDR mode, Auto is probably the best
place to put it because there there are
different HDR formats. There's HDR 10, Dolby Vision, that sort of thing
and you want the TV to to be
automatically sensing that and selecting
the right option, and the same for color
space, though so far the the settings
that I've been recommending are mainly
for watching movies, like, for you know, if
you're using the TV's apps for Netflix
or Amazon or if you have a Blu-ray
player connected, but if you have some
other sources connected there's a
couple of changes you might want to make,
specifically if you're using the HDMI
inputs, and this this is going to apply
mostly to if you have, like, a video game
console hooked up, or a PC, you'd want to
change the HDMI format from a standard
to enhanced. So one thing to know about
OLED TVs is that it is possible to
get some screen burn in. It happens very
seldom, but it can happen, and when it's
most likely to happen is if you leave
the TV on for just hours at a time like
on a news channel that has like a logo
or a crawl across the bottom that kind
of stays in the same place. There are a
couple of features built into the TV to
prevent burn in and you'll find those
under the expert panel settings. So the
pixel shift actually moves the the
picture just slightly a pixel or two
kind of constantly. It's nothing that you
would ever notice when you're watching
TV and watching movies or something. The
panel refresh feature is something that
Sony recommends that you run
once a year. It's just a
complete pixel refresh cycle. So that's
about it as far as optimizing the
settings on this Sony OLED TV. It doesn't
take that much time, but it can really
make a difference, so I definitely
recommend that you take the time. These
recommendations are based on my own
experience with Sony TVs over the years,
as well as doing a lot of reading on
websites like Rtings.com that do their
own testing and recommendations. So if
you have any questions as far as setting
up your TV, just give us a call.
