4 settings that instantly improved HDR on my TV

I'll be honest, when I first started using HDR on my LG C8 OLED, it didn't look nearly as good as it did in the showroom. Sure, it looked better than SDR, but not in the way I expected. Highlights didn't pop as much, and the overall image just didn't have that "wow" factor. But I knew the problem wasn't the panel itself because it's an OLED display after all, so I decided to mess with the picture settings.

That's when I realized just how sensitive HDR is to your TV's settings compared to SDR. Even a few wrong toggles can easily hold back picture quality, and the worst part is that some of them are enabled by default. It took me a while to figure everything out, but once I did, HDR finally started to look the way I remembered, and these are the exact settings that made the biggest difference.

I ditched the "Standard" picture mode

It's fine for SDR content, but HDR looks better in "Cinema" or "Filmmaker Mode"

Out of the box, most TVs use the "Standard" picture mode, which is fine for SDR content, but HDR exposes its flaws pretty quickly. The problem is that these modes push brightness, color, and sharpness way beyond what HDR content is actually mastered for. So you end up with an image that looks overly processed rather than realistic for the kind of content you're watching.

Switching to "Cinema" made a big difference right away. The image looked a bit warmer at first because I was so used to the "Standard" mode, but in reality, that's exactly how the picture is supposed to look. Highlights also felt more controlled instead of blown out, and colors looked far more natural, especially skin tones. You can even try "Technicolor Expert" or "Filmmaker Mode" if you want a more neutral tone, but either way, getting out of "Standard" or "Vivid" is what actually makes HDR look the way it's supposed to.

I disabled dynamic contrast

No more highlight clipping or crushed shadow detail

Dynamic contrast sounds like a smart feature at first glance because it lets your TV constantly adjust contrast on the fly based on what's on the screen. But that’s exactly why it doesn't belong in HDR content that's already mastered with very specific brightness and contrast levels. You don't want your TV to override that and start pushing contrast where it shouldn't, because that's how you end up with blown-out highlights and crushed shadow detail instead of a balanced image.

Turning it off on my LG C8 from Picture -> Picture Mode Settings -> Advanced Controls was all it took to stop bright scenes from clipping and losing detail. Darker scenes in movies and TV shows also retained more shadow detail instead of looking crushed. Sometimes, letting the content speak for itself works far better than any kind of "smart" processing your TV adds, and this is definitely one of those cases.

I stopped messing with the brightness setting

I thought I was making my TV brighter, but I was just raising black levels

This is a very silly mistake I made when I first got my LG C8, which I’m honestly a bit embarrassed to talk about. I would crank the brightness slider, thinking I was making HDR look brighter, but all I was really doing was lifting the black levels. Instead of improving the image, it just made everything look washed out, especially in darker scenes. This completely defeats the purpose of using an OLED TV in the first place.

In reality, the only setting you need to focus on, if you have an OLED, is OLED Light, which is usually locked to 100 while you're watching HDR content, anyway. That's what controls how bright highlights can get, not the regular brightness slider, and I had to learn that the hard way. Now, I leave the brightness slider at its default, around 50, and blacks look just as good as you'd expect from an OLED panel.

Energy saving is HDR's worst enemy

It holds back peak brightness, which HDR content depends on

I don't mind leaving energy-saving enabled when I'm watching SDR content, but HDR is a completely different story. In fact, this is one of the biggest reasons why HDR looked underwhelming on my TV in the first place. Unfortunately, energy saving was enabled by default on my LG C8, and I realized that a bit late. Basically, all it does is limit how bright your panel can get to save power, which is the last thing you want when watching HDR content.

I actually noticed this when I was switching between picture modes and couldn't figure out why HDR sometimes looked noticeably dimmer. It wasn't the mode itself, but the energy saver kicking in and capping brightness behind the scenes. So if HDR looks dull no matter what you tweak, this is one setting you should check first. Disabling it can also help with tone mapping, so highlights stop looking muted.

You just need to tune your TV differently for HDR

If there's one thing I've learned from living with the LG C8 since 2019, it's that you can't use the same settings that made SDR content look good for HDR because they work differently. HDR usually needs a bit more tuning to look its best, and even a few wrong settings leave you feeling disappointed with your TV purchase. It definitely takes a while to get a better understanding of what each picture setting does, but once you get that right, you'll be just as impressed by the highlights and black levels as you were in the showroom.