How To Get The Best Out of Your Home Entertainment Products for the Ultimate Movie Night-in
Ensuring you get the best experience when watching movie and TV content at home can be hard, which is why we have gathered 5 of our top tips to help you get your cinematic movie night in or ultimate TV marathon right.
1. Setting the right ‘movie’ scene
We don’t want to make home entertainment any more complicated than it needs to be, finding that right movie or TV series can take up enough time as it is. What is important is to make sure you set up the perfect scene; make sure your curtains are shut, your TV and sofas are positioned to get the optimal viewing experience and you have some cinema snacks to hand (we recommend sweet and salty popcorn). Make sure you’re cosy and comfortable enough, and then you’re ready to sit back, relax and immerse yourself in that movie you have been wanting to watch!
2. Utilise Picture Modes - what does each do?
Your Panasonic TV comes with a number of different picture modes built into the TV, designed to allow you to customise your viewing experience to get the best out of the content you’re watching.
The Normal Mode is the best allrounder – it gives a good balance of being bright and colourful, without being too unnatural. It’s great for everyday TV shows, such as soaps, reality TV and kids shows. It’s also the best mode if you just want to leave the remote alone and not play with the settings.
Dynamic Mode is the TV working at its maximum – full brightness, most colour, deepest contrast. It is perhaps too bright for everyday – the colours will be too saturated and not so realistic – but it is good for showing off what your TV can do.
The Cinema Mode is a Panasonic speciality. We work very hard to make the picture on your TV look exactly how the filmmaker intended. If your Panasonic TV has a True Cinema or Filmmaker mode, all the better, as these were set up by Hollywood experts, for the true movie experience. These modes will look a little darker at first, but when you turn down the lights to watch a movie, they are ideal.
Sport Mode will boost the brightness and colour, to give the impression of being outside at the stadium watching your favourite match. It will even adjust the TV speakers to “Stadium Mode” so it sounds like you’re there live in the action.
Game Mode is hugely important to gamers. It doesn’t change the picture too much, instead it speeds up the reaction time of the TV so that the picture reacts instantly. Essential if you are playing a first person shooter, where fractions of a second count in the game.
Al Mode uses artificial intelligence to look at the content and switch modes – so the TV knows the football has finished and a movie has started and it automatically changes from Sport to Cinema.
3. Match the TV to your room lighting
It may come as a surprise, but the biggest challenge to picture quality will most likely be your room itself, specifically the light levels of when you watch your TV. What you see during the day, or in the evening with lights set high, can be quite different from watching in low or no light.
So if your TV has a Dolby Vision setting, and when you’re watching Dolby Vision TV shows or movies (available on streaming services or Blu-ray discs) during the day, or in a brightly lit room, we suggest you select the Dolby Vision Bright image preset. This adds a more visual punch to the image, improving contrast and image clarity regardless of ambient light in the room.
When you are not watching Dolby Vision content, choose Filmmaker Mode. This mode provides an accurate, cinematic feel but also uses the TV sensor to adjust the picture as the room gets brighter or darker.
One tip you can apply to any TV is that if you want to make the picture easier to view in a very bright room, increase the Contrast setting on the TV, not the Brightness. The Brightness control raises the black level and can make the picture more washed out, it will be brighter, but not necessarily easier to see. Increasing the contrast increases the difference between dark and bright, making the picture stand out more and therefore easier to see, even in a bright room.
4. Enhance Your Sound
If you have a Dolby Atmos setting on your TV, you should use it even if you are just watching content using the regular TV speakers. Built-in TV speakers are often underneath the screen and face downwards, sending the audio into the floor or a table. The Dolby Atmos processing won’t magically transform those TV speakers into surround sound, but it will give the sound a lift – like it is coming from the actors mouths rather than their feet.
If you don’t have a Dolby Atmos setting on your TV, don’t worry! Most TVs have a speech mode which is useful if you are struggling to make out dialogue in the film or TV content you’re watching. This mode boosts the frequencies of human speech so that the speaking stands out from the background noise. We recommend you have deep dive into the settings on your TV and get familiar, to ensure you’re maximising your sound and viewing experience.
5. Netflix Recommended for a reason
The first thing to say is that selected Panasonic TVs have a “Netflix Calibrated” mode*. It is a mode set up by Netflix so that the picture is in line with the shows and movies they produce. Working with the Netflix app built-into the TV, this Netflix Calibrated mode automatically ensures what you watch at home reflects what was seen in the Netflix mastering suite. It’s your guarantee of authenticity. Of course not all films on Netflix were made especially for Netflix, but it is a good all round choice for watching films.
Selected models are also Netflix Recommended**, this means they have been officially certified as delivering the finest possible Netflix experience, so if you’re watching Netflix on these models, sit back, relax and enjoy the best Netflix viewing experience possible.
