To get the most out of your HDTV set it has to be calibrated to your individual home settings. When you buy an HDTV it is likely calibrated to factory or shop settings but with the potential for a far better picture comes the potential for a far worse picture too. In this article we are going to take you through a step by step guide on setting up your HDTV to get the best possible picture.

Adjusting the HDTV picture settings

Lighting
Start your HDTV calibration by looking at your viewing environment. Natural daylight is the best possible light for viewing anything and expensive bulbs that replicate daylight are the next best thing. Try to set up your room so it has as much daylight as possible without any light reflecting directly onto the HDTV screen

Brightness
Also known as Black-level. Brightness, contrary to the name actually adjusts how dark the picture appears. This is crucial in dark scenes to stop areas of grey and black merging into each other. Turn it up too high and your HDTV picture will look washed out, turn it too low and dark areas lose definition. Choose a nice dark scene from your high definition DVD, a dark room for example then max out the brightness, bring it down until the walls are distinguishable from the floors and you can make out murky shadows.

Contrast
Also known as white level or picture level it controls the strength of white areas in the picture. If the brightness is too high you will lose detail and place your HDTV elements under fatal strain, especially with Plasma HDTV sets. Too little brightness means a weak picture. To get the balance right, choose a scene with someone wearing white, turn the brightness to maximum and then increment it down until details appear in their clothing - wrinkles, buttons or pockets for example.

Colour
Or saturation controls the intensity of colours. Too much colour makes everyone look like they've been over doing it on the sunbeds (unless you are watching Dynasty re-runs and they are supposed to look like that), too little and you are back to good old black and white. Your HDTV set will most likely come with a number of preset colour options - called colour-temperature. Find a DVD with a close-up of someone with light skin tones, turn it up to give them a free St. Tropez and reduce it slowly until they look normal again.

Using a THX enhanced DVD to maximise your HDTV settings

This is a brilliant little tip courtesy of the clever people at THX. Find a DVD which is THX enhanced, you can choose from many recent titles. Pop the DVD into your player and go to the included picture optimiser, this will take you through a range of scenes where you are asked to adjust your HDTV settings until it matches the picture. It works on any type of HDTV in any kind of room. A similar feature is also present on the start-up screens of many video games.

Be careful of power cables

Do not have all of your devices plugged into a single socket. This is not only extremely dangerous in terms of fire-risk and damage to HDTV equipment in the event of a power surge, but it also causes interference that can severely hamper the performance of your HDTV set and other home entertainment devices. It is worth spending a little extra on a multi plug extension bar with surge protection.