How your TV settings ruin movies

Your TV finds lots of ways to adjust your picture. You might not want any of them.

Motion smoothing, sharpening, brightness, contrast, and saturation are all adjustments that your television makes to your picture. TVs can have different viewing “modes” that make varied adjustments depending on the scene. Often, these adjustments are made by default and the picture you end up watching can differ wildly from what filmmakers intend. But all those tweaks aren’t always for the better.

These adjustments are subtle but significant, especially when viewed alongside the original image. Fortunately, there is a solution. TV manufacturers have begun adopting new modes, like “Filmmaker Mode,” which largely remove television tweaks to an image so you can see what filmmakers wanted you to see.

Watch the video above to see the difference between changed and unchanged modes and, most importantly, learn how to turn those settings off.

You can find this video and more on Vox’s YouTube Channel.