Tyler Wells Lynch and Lee Neikirk

Reviewed.com / USA TODAY

Adjusting backlight makes your TV look brighter in sunny rooms and easier on the eyes in dark rooms

Contrast settings control the intensity of white parts of the screen%2C and brightness the black areas

As a rule%2C you almost never have to change your color settings

Whether you spent a load of money on your TV and want to make the most of it, or are just trying to make your small-screen discount special look like a million bucks, a little bit of calibration can go a long way.

Tinkering with settings doesn't need to be intimidating. If you already like the way your TV looks, you probably don't need to calibrate it. But if your screen isn't bright enough, if it just doesn't look right, or even if it's giving you a headache, a few basic tweaks will help to clear up most problems.

BACKLIGHT

In an LCD/LED TV, the backlight is like the flashlight that lights the puppet show. A higher setting here increases the brightness of the entire screen.

There is an ideal setting that will keep your picture from being either too dim or too bright, and it depends almost entirely on the room's lighting. In a sun-drenched living room, a brighter backlight allows the TV to compete with that brightness, reducing glare. In a dim basement, a darker backlight makes the TV easier on the eyes.

To adjust your backlight to the lighting in the room, turn it down until it's too dim, and then slowly bring it up until it feels comfortable to watch.

CONTRAST

Once you've set your TV's backlight to suit the room, setting contrast is the next logical step. Another mislabeled term, the "contrast" setting on an HDTV actually controls the intensity of the whitest areas on screen.

At big-box retailers you might notice that the display TVs have an almost painfully bright and flashy look. They're only set that way to grab your attention. At home, you'll want to turn the contrast and backlight settings down — the defaults "Movie" or "Cinema" modes are fine for most rooms.

BRIGHTNESS

Counterintuitively, the brightness setting actually controls the black areas of the picture. So a more apt name might be "darkness."

This setting is usually set to the correct levels by default. Turning it up too far will wash out areas of the picture meant to be black, and turning it down too far will blacken some of the colors, eliminating vital details in movies and shows. If you want a darker picture, turn brightness down just a few clicks.

SHARPNESS

Sharpness is essentially a relic from the days of analog TV. It's unnecessary in today's digital world because your set-top box or disc player determines the sharpness before it arrives at your screen.

When you turn sharpness up, the TV exaggerates the areas where bright content and dark content meet, which creates unwanted halos. Our advice is to turn sharpness down to zero—or at least no higher than its factory default.

COLOR

If contrast handles white levels, and brightness handles black levels, color simply adjusts how "colorful" the picture is. This is why turning color down to its minimum setting gives you a black and white picture.

As a rule, color almost never needs to be changed. The default setting — usually 50 — results in a color saturation that is correct by international HDTV standards. However, turning it up a few clicks might look better to your eyes.

The most important thing is to find a picture that you're comfortable watching — and these adjustments should help get you there.

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