New TVs May Need Adjustments

Shopping for a television at a big electronics store can be like standing in a room full of screaming people. Every set wants your attention, every screen blazes with a bright picture that shouts “buy me!”

Stand back from the wall of TVs and look up and down the line. Which one has the best picture? They all seem equally bright and flashy.

What you’re seeing is TV merchandising for the ‘90s. Video professionals say manufacturers are “tweaking” their sets at the factory - cranking up internal picture controls to unnaturally bright levels - so their product has a chance of standing out from the pack in the retail meat market.

But the experts say that pushing a set that hard can lead to early video burnout, years of lost picture quality. Stores are realizing that, testing new TVs and changing factory settings before buyers take them home.

“Every single set put out is wrong, and purposely wrong,” said Michael Levy, president of Total Media, a Farmingdale, N.Y., company that helps Video recalibrate sets before the magazine tests them.

A poorly adjusted picture can ruin the mood of a movie.

Levy said all the TVs he’s calibrated are set too high at the factory. Contrast settings, which regulate the amount of white in the picture, are so high pictures bleach out and “masks” that guide electrons to the proper color targets warp.

Brightness settings also are too high, reducing the amount of black in the picture and fouling its proportions. And Levy said color controls usually are set so high that colors, especially red, “look cartoonish.”