Any advice please on "best" picture + sound settings for Sony Bravia KDL-37S5500 tv

jjscotman

Hi
Today I've just set up my new Sony Bravia KDL-37S500 tv and to be honest was slightly underwhelmed by the quality of the initial picture and sound I got.
I know very little about tv technicalities and even less about "tweaking" the settings for "best" results and should be very grateful if the more knowledgeable members of the forum could please help me out.
The picture seemed to improve significantly when I changed to Vivid Mode. The other settings I have on are Backlight - Max, Contrast - Max, Colour Tone - Cool and Noise Reduction - Low.
As regards sound I have it set to Dynamic but I'm unsure whether Surround should be Surround, Simulated Sterio or Off. It is set at Off for the moment.
Treble is set at +4, Bass +4 Balance 0, Dual Sound at Stereo, Auto Volume at On and Speaker at TV speaker.
My living room is quite small and the tv faces away from direct sunlight.
I watch tv via Virgin Media Cable with a V+ HD box which utilises a HDMI socket.
I have also installed my PS3 and Xbox 360 which utilise the other 2 HDMI sockets.
From reviews I know this particular tv is one of the lower level Sony Bravia's but my budget meant I could not get a better one.

However any advice on how to get the best out of it would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance for help !!

buglawton

If you like the Vivid 'shop' setting then that's about it.

On my Bravia I use the power saving mode 'low' but tweaked the backlight setting up a step.

jjscotman

Thanks for reply.

My knowledge is so limited I did not realise that Vivid was the shop setting.

I suppose Standard is the normal home setting so put it there and took your advice of stepping up the backlight.

eatscoobysnax

jjscotman wrote: »

Hi
Today I've just set up my new Sony Bravia KDL-37S500 tv and to be honest was slightly underwhelmed by the quality of the initial picture and sound I got.
I know very little about tv technicalities and even less about "tweaking" the settings for "best" results and should be very grateful if the more knowledgeable members of the forum could please help me out.
The picture seemed to improve significantly when I changed to Vivid Mode. The other settings I have on are Backlight - Max, Contrast - Max, Colour Tone - Cool and Noise Reduction - Low.
As regards sound I have it set to Dynamic but I'm unsure whether Surround should be Surround, Simulated Sterio or Off. It is set at Off for the moment.
Treble is set at +4, Bass +4 Balance 0, Dual Sound at Stereo, Auto Volume at On and Speaker at TV speaker.
My living room is quite small and the tv faces away from direct sunlight.
I watch tv via Virgin Media Cable with a V+ HD box which utilises a HDMI socket.
I have also installed my PS3 and Xbox 360 which utilise the other 2 HDMI sockets.
From reviews I know this particular tv is one of the lower level Sony Bravia's but my budget meant I could not get a better one.

However any advice on how to get the best out of it would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks in advance for help !!

Hello, not sure what anyone else uses to calibrate their TV but when I bought bbc's "LIFE" Blu Ray I got a free HDTV calibration disc with it.

It takes you through different options to fine tune your TV in order to view blu rays at the optimum settings. Im assuming these settings wont be optimum for viewing standard definition but they surely couldnt be too far off??

Also, I think I looked on avforums.com for advice on what settings on my SONY tv to turn off to get a better picture.... They have all sorts of "picture enhancing" options that actually make certain aspects of the picture you see sub-standard, using up computing power to do things that slow down the refresh rate etc etc.....

Please note I am a complete novice at TV gobbledegook so may well be off, but a lot of what I read made sense so gave it a try.

The calibration disc with the Life Blu Ray (part of one of the discs) was spot on though, the picture was much better when I used the settings I changed.

Hope that helps ya!

Scooby

*** Edit: You can prob find the calibration disc online somewhere, otherwise borrow a BBC Blu Ray documentary, They prob have the calibration thing in other releases?? Def do it though, made a massive difference.

Millionaire

I would drop the contrast and backight down to around half or just above. I have my Sony sound on Dynamic setting.

jjscotman

Many thanks to all for your helpful replies.