Give Your TV a Tune-Up for Super Bowl LIX

Tweaking settings on a model from LG, Samsung, or another brand can help it look its best for the Super Bowl—and everything else

With just a few simple steps, you can improve the picture quality on your TV in time for the Super Bowl on Feb. 9.

By James K. Willcox

With Super Bowl LIX approaching, you might be spending more time poring over game-time recipes than fiddling with your TV settings. But making some adjustments can help the action, including breakaway runs and end-zone tush pushes, pop on your set in all their high-def glory.

That’s because the default settings probably don’t do justice to all the picture quality your TV can deliver.

You could pay a few hundred dollars for TV calibration, but it’s easy to do it yourself. And you don’t have to worry about messing things up; almost all TVs have a reset button to bring everything back to the default settings.

This year it can be especially helpful to tweak your settings because the big game is on Fox, and it’s showing it in 4K in high dynamic range (HDR) on both Fox broadcasts and Tubi, the free streaming service the company owns. High dynamic range can really make the picture more vibrant and lifelike if everything is set up right.

You’ll also be able to catch the game, which takes place in New Orleans at 6:30 p.m. ET on Sunday, Feb. 9, on Fox Deportes and Telemundo, as well as on Fox’s website and the NFL Plus app. In addition to Fox’s Super Bowl pregame show, there will be a preshow program hosted by Olivia Culpo that airs exclusively on Tubi. If you can’t wait until the game, you can tune into the NFL Channel on Tubi to watch “Countdown to the Super Bowl” starting on Jan. 28. It will feature historic Super Bowls, iconic halftime shows, the best of NFL Honors, NFL analysis, and more.

As in past years, Fox will shoot the game in 1080p HDR and then upscale the video to 4K for its broadcasts. The upscaled 4K Fox broadcasts will be available on TV providers that support it, including Comcast/Infinity, Dish, DirecTV and DirecTV Stream, Fubo, Altice/Optimum, Sling TV, Verizon, and YouTube TV. It will also be shown in 4K via the Fox Sports app, which requires you to log in with a TV provider’s credentials.

To get the most out of these broadcasts, you’ll want your TV to look as good as possible. If you’re a Consumer Reports member, there’s a quick way to get to the best settings: Consult CR’s TV Screen Optimizer, which provides the best settings for thousands of television models. These are the settings we arrive at after calibrating each TV in our labs to get it looking its best.

Ready to start tweaking the settings on your own? Here’s how.

Start With a Picture Mode Preset

All TVs now come with a menu of picture modes with names such as “vivid,” “natural,” “sports,” and “cinema.” When you select one, the brightness, contrast, and sharpness are adjusted to preset values.

Our advice: Don’t choose “sports” mode for watching sports—or anything else. That could artificially boost brightness, contrast, and colors, and turn on motion smoothing (more on that below). Stay away from the “vivid” and “dynamic” modes, too. They tend to overemphasize contrast and sharpness, and lower the brightness to less-than-optimal levels.

Instead, we’ve found that modes with names like “natural,” “cinema,” and “movie” generally provide the best results. If your TV has a Filmmaker Mode, try it. It’s the one that gets most TVs closest to our own calibrated settings.

Tweak the TV Settings Individually

With us so far? Once you’ve selected one of those preset modes, many TVs let you tweak the picture’s appearance further while staying in that mode. On other sets, once you start additional fiddling, the TV will automatically shift to a “custom” or “preference” mode. Either way, the following steps will be the same.

Brightness level: This is also called black level, and it’s critical for top picture quality. Ideally, a TV should be able to display deep black areas of the picture without losing the detail within the darkest areas. Freeze-frame a nighttime scene, such as one from a Batman or vampire movie. Turn the brightness/black level up until you can see the details in the image’s darkest areas. Then turn it down so that the black gets as black as possible without obscuring the detail. With most LCD sets, you won’t get as deep a black as you can with an OLED TV.

Contrast: Also called white level, contrast affects how bright the picture looks. Find an image with lots of white—say, a wedding gown or a sky full of puffy white clouds. Lower the contrast until you can see all the detail, such as the shadows in the folds of the gown or the subtle gray shadings in the clouds. Then raise it to get the brightest picture possible without washing out those details. You’ll generally want to set the contrast below the maximum level.

Color and tint: Once the black-and-white balance is optimized, it’s time to adjust the color settings. Start with color temperature, which is sometimes called color tone. We recommend choosing the “warm” or “low” setting so that whites don’t appear too blue. Then adjust the tint/hue control so that flesh tones look natural, neither too red nor too greenish-yellow. This setting generally works best when it’s in the middle of the range. Adjust the color-level control (saturation) so that colors look vivid and realistic but not like they’re glowing. All of these settings may interact with one another in odd ways, so repeat the process as necessary.

Sharpness and more: Manufacturers often set the sharpness control rather high and turn on noise-reduction and other image-enhancement modes. These are rarely needed when you’re watching high-quality HD programming or a Blu-ray movie. In most cases, you should resist the temptation to crank up the sharpness to enhance HD’s fine detail. The best HDTVs need little or no help showing all the resolution in HD images. If you set the sharpness control too high, the background will start to look grainy and a halo will appear around the edges of certain objects, making the overall image appear less natural. We suggest that you turn the sharpness control down to zero, then add sharpness sparingly if the image looks soft. Turn off any noise-reduction and image-enhancement modes, as well; those tend to reduce image detail.

One final thing to consider. Some TVs let you store different picture settings for different video inputs, such as cable TV, a streaming device, or a Blu-ray player. It could be worth storing customized settings for these inputs because the brightness, color, and other picture attributes can vary based on what device is supplying the video.

TV Picks

Other than being at the Super Bowl in person, there’s no better way to catch all the action than with a big-screen TV that has great overall picture quality. These 65-inch sets at various prices fit the bill. And don’t be afraid to go even bigger. Most of these models are also available in larger screen sizes.

LG OLED65G4SUB

The LG OLED65G4SUB is LG’s flagship 4K OLED TV for 2024, and it’s among the best TVs you can buy. Thanks to its new microlens array (MLA) technology, which LG calls Brightness Booster Max, it’s the brightest LG OLED we’ve tested. This set earns top scores for overall picture quality as well as HDR performance; it also has excellent sound. For gamers, the set supports 4K 144-hertz refresh rates, ALLM, and VRR. Unlike last year’s G3 sets, the 55- and 65-inch G4 models come with a stand. Also, this year no LG sets will include an ATSC 3.0 tuner because of a licensing issue.

Samsung QN65S90D

The Samsung QN65S90D, a QD OLED set positioned just below the company’s flagship series for 2024, delivers excellent overall picture quality as well as HDR performance. It also has excellent sound. It has a new AI processor, and for gamers, the set supports 4K 144-hertz refresh rates as well as ALLM and VRR. A new gaming feature, called Auto AI mode, automatically adjusts the picture based on the genre of game it detects. Samsung TVs support HDR10, HDR10+, and HLG HDR formats, but not Dolby Vision. One unusual aspect of Samsung’s 2024 S90D lineup (and S90DD models, sold in warehouse clubs) is that it uses two different OLED TV technologies, QD-OLED and WOLED, depending on screen size. We think that the 55-, 65-, and 77-inch models use QD-OLED panels, while the 42-, 48-, and 83-inch sets use WOLED panels. As far as we can tell, QD-OLED models have an FXZA suffix, while the WOLED sets use EXZA.

TCL 65QM851G

The TCL 65QM851G, the company’s flagship QLED model for 2024, offers a lot of performance for the money, including excellent overall picture quality and top-notch HDR performance, thanks to very high peak brightness. This model has a Mini LED backlight, which can improve contrast and black levels, and supports both Dolby Vision and HDR10+ HDR formats. It’s a Google TV with built-in Google Assistant.

TCL 65QM850G

The TCL 65QM850G, the company’s flagship model for 2023, offers a lot for the money, including very satisfying overall picture quality and top-notch HDR performance. In 2023 the QM8 sets were the only TCL TVs to get Mini LED backlights. In 2024, more sets were built with this feature.

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