If you’re looking for a new TV for your home theater, there are a few things to keep in mind to ensure you get the best movie-watching experience. There are four main criteria that are considered when evaluating how suitable a TV is for watching movies.
contrast ratio
Contrast ratio is the ratio of the brightness of the brightest white to the darkest black that a TV can produce. A higher contrast ratio means your TV can display deeper blacks, improving overall picture quality, especially when watching content in a dark room. If your TV has a low contrast ratio, blacks will appear gray when viewed in a dark room, reducing immersion when watching movies in a dark home theater environment. Additionally, TVs with good contrast ratios are better at highlighting bright highlights with HDR. Therefore, OLEDs, which have a near-infinite contrast ratio due to perfect black, usually provide the best overall HDR effect, even if the HDR brightness is relatively low. than LED TV. LED TVs with local dimming naturally have a better contrast ratio than those without, as they can darken the dark areas of the screen while highlighting the bright areas individually.
Also read our in-depth article on contrast ratio and QLED, OLED, and LED TVs.
HDR peak brightness
One of the biggest advances in TV technology in recent years has been the development of high dynamic range (HDR) video formats. HDR improves the picture quality of movies and shows by displaying a wider range of colors with brighter highlights than standard dynamic range (SDR) content. Peak brightness is probably one of the most important aspects of HDR. This is the biggest advantage of high-end TVs, as HDR content uses the high brightness feature to display realistic highlights. If your TV has limited HDR peak brightness, it won’t be able to properly display all the highlights that your content should display. As mentioned above, TVs can display bright and dark highlights without losing detail, so it’s also important to have a high contrast ratio and good local dimming capabilities to provide a good HDR experience. is.
If you want to learn more, we have detailed articles on HDR peak brightness and HDR and SDR.
image processing
When looking at processing, three main elements are important: sharpening when upscaling low-resolution signals, smoothing of low-quality content, and HDR native gradient processing. Your TV’s upscaling and sharpening process is especially important if you’re watching low-resolution content from a physical player that doesn’t have its own upscaling capabilities, such as a cable box or an older DVD player. Proper upscaling precisely scales the lower resolution to the pixel count of the screen’s higher resolution, preserving detail and providing a crisp, sharp image without noticeable imperfections. If upscaling and sharpening are not done well, this detail will not be transformed properly, resulting in images that are blurry or too sharp.
Low-quality content smoothing examines how well your TV processes images to smooth out rough areas of content and reduce banding and macroblocking caused by low bitrate signals. Many people believe that streaming services are generally of high quality, but this is not actually the case. Even at the highest level available on a streaming platform, even when transmitting a 4K signal, streaming services use compression algorithms to reduce the amount of bandwidth used. As a result, compression artifacts are noticeable, such as black blocks appearing in near-black scenes. TVs with better low-quality content smoothing will remove these artifacts, giving you an overall clean picture while preserving detail.
Finally, good gradient processing is important for producing fine detail, especially in scenes that contain different shades of similar colors, such as in HDR. Detailed colors are one of the benefits of HDR video, so the test results are important for anyone interested in this type of media. Normally, these shades should blend perfectly and transition into each other, but it is easy to notice that the gradient is poorly processed, since it takes the form of bands of colors of similar shades. Banding can occur for several reasons, such as a low bitrate signal or low bit depth, but the TV’s processing can also cause banding.
For more information, see our article on sharpening and upscaling color gradients.
color accuracy
When viewing content, it’s important to have a color-accurate image. Still, movie buffs will only notice minor inaccuracies. Because a scene that is supposed to be a certain shade can end up being a completely different shade. A common example is when a bluish scene appears green, or vice versa. Another example is the issue of skin tone accuracy. Most TVs have colors that are accurate enough out of the box that most people won’t be able to tell the difference. If accurate color reproduction is important to you, you’ll want a TV with excellent out-of-the-box accuracy that won’t require you to spend too much time adjusting. Most TVs exhibit near-perfect accuracy after calibration, so it’s important to check the results before calibration.
For more information on this topic, see Color Accuracy.
We’ve purchased and tested over 455 TVs. Below you’ll find our recommendations for the best TVs for movies you can buy. Check out our picks for the best OLED TVs, the best smart TVs, the best 4k TVs, or vote for which TV you’d like us to buy and test. You can also consider the best home theater projector instead of a TV. For more information on 2024 TV models, please visit our 2024 TV Lineup page.
