Roku TV Owners Can Improve Picture Quality With a Few Settings Changes

Engadget reported that a different picture mode, or a small number of tweaks inside the television's menus, can make a surprisingly large difference to what viewers see. The settings are reached by pressing the star button on the Roku remote and selecting Picture Settings; if the option does not appear, the guide advises starting playback first. The menu lists Display Brightness, Picture Mode and Customize picture.

Among the picture modes, Standard and Movie provide the best accuracy, while Vivid boosts color saturation, brightness and contrast. According to the guide, Vivid is the mode manufacturers typically use to emphasize sets in showrooms and its image tends to look more exaggerated than it should. Movie mode applies less image processing and skews slightly warmer in color temperature. Roku Smart Picture, a fourth option, detects what is on screen and selects a mode to match.

Further control is available in the Customize picture menu, which includes Backlight, contrast and sharpness. The guide states that a higher Backlight value is generally better for bright rooms, and that the remaining settings should be adjusted gradually to suit the viewer. Higher contrast or sharpness is not automatically better, it notes, because excessive sharpness can make the picture look overly processed. The recommendation is to move these levels in small increments and then watch content to judge the result, with model-specific calibration guides available online as a baseline.

An Expert or Advanced submenu holds additional processing controls. The main one to watch is listed under names such as Action Smoothing, Action Clarity or LED Motion Clarity. Motion interpolation of this kind makes fast-moving content appear more fluid, which the guide says works well for sports, but it gives films and most other content an artificial soap-opera look. It can be disabled entirely or set to Low. The same submenu usually contains Noise Reduction, Color Temperature and Dynamic Contrast; the guide recommends turning down or disabling Noise Reduction and Dynamic Contrast for the most accurate image, while color temperature can be chosen to taste.

Picture settings on a Roku TV apply to each input separately. The Customize picture menu includes an Apply settings to all inputs button at the bottom for owners who do not want to tune every input individually.

Engadget also warned against the Low Power display mode that most Roku TVs ship with enabled. Energy efficiency regulations in many regions require electronics manufacturers to stay below certain power consumption limits, and while the mode uses less electricity, it reduces the display's maximum brightness, often to the point of hurting image quality. Bright scenes lose their visual impact and the overall image looks flatter than on the same set running another picture mode, the guide states. Dark scenes become harder to read because reduced brightness compresses the difference between similar dark shades, and lower brightness can also dull color vibrancy. The guide noted that content mastered for high dynamic range displays is designed around high brightness levels.