Which picture mode should I use?

Choose the mode named cinema, film or movie, and change as little else as possible.

Why the default is wrong

The out-of-box mode is set for a shop floor: maximum brightness, boosted colour, a very blue white point, and processing turned up. It is designed to be noticed under fluorescent light next to twenty other screens, and it is the worst setting in a dark room.

The three things to turn off

Motion smoothing, for anything shot at 24 frames. Sharpness, usually to zero or near it — most of what it adds is artificial edges rather than detail. Dynamic contrast and similar automatic adjustments, which pump the picture up and down as scenes change.

The one thing to adjust by eye

Brightness — the control that sets black level, confusingly. Turn it until the darkest parts of a night scene are black but shadow detail is still visible. Too low and everything below a threshold disappears; too high and blacks turn grey.

When to stop

When you stop noticing the picture. Chasing further adjustment usually means undoing the ones that worked, and a calibrated image looks unremarkable — which is the point.

This does not replace the manufacturer's own instructions. Every brightness figure, contrast ratio, power rating and load capacity on this page is reported from the manufacturer's own documentation, with its unit written as published, and named as such — none of it is measured here. A brightness figure that is not expressed in ANSI or ISO lumens is reported as the manufacturer expressed it and is never converted, because no conversion exists.