How To Calibrate Sharpness Settings On A Home Theater Projector or Television

This article is part of our Home Theater Design Series that covers virtually everything you need to know about designing a home theater. We have a full series on the top five tips to improve your home theater video. If you follow these tips, you can substantially improve your home theater or media room. This tip breaks down how to get the perfect sharpness settings on your television or front projector.

Open your display picture settings and write down your current sharpness level. While playing the test frames in the video, look closely at the "e" and the "x" in the word "example."

Now, increase your sharpness all of the way up. You should see some white ringing inside the "e", at the edges of the "x", and potentially around all of the text. Your display is trying to increase sharpness by adding white lines at the edges that should not be there.

Next, run your sharpness down until you see the extra white go away. Once the extra white border is gone, write down your new sharpness level. On average you would rather have sharpness too low than too high as sharpness adds borders that are not in the content to increase the perception of sharpness. With a good television or projector and high-resolution content, higher sharpness actually degrades the original content. 

Using the next test image in the video, run your sharpness up again looking closely where either of the two blue bars intersects. On many displays, you may see another white line form between the two blue bars which is not in the content.

If you run your sharpness down until the white border is gone and you see only the two blue bars adjacent to each other. Set your sharpness based on the results from these two tests.

If you want to further improve your image, check out our Focus, Brightness and Contrast, Panel alignment, Lip sync and other videos which are in this same YouTube playlist.

Conclusion

We hope this tip has made it easy to improve the sharpness settings on your projector or television. If you have any questions, call 888.899.8776, chat with us, or stop by our award-winning showrooms. At Audio Advice, we've been designing and installing high-performance home theaters & smart home systems for our customers in North Carolina and the surrounding areas for decades. In fact, we've delivered more custom theaters than anyone in the Southeast! We are now offering Home Theater Design no matter where you live in the United States! If you are interested in a custom home theater or upgrading your current system, give us a call at 888.899.8776, chat with us, or stop by our award-winning showrooms. We can't wait to help you build your ultimate home theater!