TORONTO -- High definition televisions continue to get larger and drop in price, but no matter what TV you purchase it might not look the same in your home as it did at the store.
Newer televisions come with lots of features and settings and while many sound like performance-boosters, Consumer Reports says there are three specific settings that will actually make the picture look worse, no matter what television you own.
Jim Willcox works in the Consumer Reports TV labs and says the first setting you want to turn off is noise reduction.
"Noise or snow, was a bigger issue with older analog TVs. Today, were getting cleaner, higher quality digital signals. The problem is that when you engage noise reduction, it comes at the expense of fine detail and texture so images look a lot softer. When you turn off noise reduction, you'll get more detailed-looking pictures and more natural-looking images," Willcox said.
The next setting you want to turn off is sharpness control.
"Sharpness control artificially boosts fine detail and texture, and it can exaggerate the edges of objects in the picture. Now the problem is it may seem like at first that you're getting greater detail, but sharpness control is actually masking fine detail and it can create halos around objects in the picture," Willcox said.
And the third and some say the most hated TV setting you should turn off is motion smoothing.
"Some movies and a lot of TV shows are shot 24 frames per second, or 24hz. Video on the other hand is shot at 60hz which is why some programs like game shows, sports, and reality shows have a lot smoother motion than films. The problem is, when you turn on motion smoothing, it makes movies look a lot like video, something people call the soap opera effect. The good news is that a lot of TVs allow you to turn off motion smoothing."
A final bit of advice - don't worry about straying too far with any of these adjustments. Most televisons have a reset option if you want to restore the factory settings.
