Getting Started with Spears & Munsil UHD HDR Benchmark

If you've recently purchased a big, beautiful Ultra HD TV, congratulations! Or, if you're considering upgrading your current HDTV to a brand-new UHD TV, that's a great idea. It would be a significant improvement in terms of resolution, brightness, dynamic range, color range, and video processing. Regardless, buying a UHD TV is a big investment in your video entertainment, so you should aim to get the best possible performance out of it.

Unfortunately, most people don't think about this much. They simply take the TV out of the box, plug it in, turn it on, and leave it at that. However, most TVs come with settings designed to make the picture stand out in a retail showroom under bright lights. But homes aren't showrooms, so the TV's settings need to be adjusted for the best picture quality in that environment.

So, what defines the "best possible picture quality"? It's adherence to a set of standards used by content creators to set up the video displays they use to view their work. The best picture quality on a consumer TV should closely replicate what the content creators saw when producing the content, preserving the artist's intent.

Ideally, the TV's environment should match that of the content creators, but that's not practical in most homes. Studios are typically dark with minimal light, while many homes have light-colored walls and ambient light. This should be considered when adjusting a TV's picture controls.

The good news is that it's relatively easy to optimize the picture quality of your new UHD TV for your home environment. All you need is a UHD Blu-ray player and a copy of the UHD HDR Benchmark setup disc from Spears & Munsil. Created by video scientists Stacey Spears and Don Munsil, this setup disc provides everything you need to adjust your UHD TV's settings for top performance.

The only way to further improve your TV's performance beyond what you can do with UHD HDR Benchmark is to hire a professional calibrator. However, this can be expensive, and you can usually achieve 70 to 80 percent of ultimate performance by using UHD HDR Benchmark and the instructions provided.

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