Recently bought a new telly as the old one finally gave up the ghost. 11 years of fairly regular use and apparently obsolete so couldn’t have repaired if we wanted to.

Ended up with an LG 4k LED thingy, and whilst the picture itself is OK the black levels/contrast is utterly woeful. Huge halos round any lighter areas on the screen and any blacks are actually just glowing dark blue areas. If I go to the settings and reduce the backlight to produce an acceptable black level, everything else is really dull. Am I just setting it up incorrectly or is this how TVs are now? The old one (Samsung LED) was utterly brilliant at separating light & dark.

What is your source? Are there any settings to tell it what device you are viewing on?

Might be worth checking out recommend settings for your model on the AV Forums forum. Failing that contact the shop or manufacturer. Also check for reviews to see if that is a flaw of that model.

Which specific model buy? I’m probably going to be buying a new TV in the next few weeks , so interested to hear specific feedback.

As per AndyL – try to find some recommended settings and reviews. http://www.hdtvtest.co.uk/ is still my goto site as they focus very much on picture quality rather than ‘features’

If it has picture presets (Normal/Vivid etc) a ‘Cinema’ mode normally gives the most natural picture. Vivid settings turn everything up to maximum to stand out in an overlit showroom next to lots of other sets. ‘Standard’ or ‘Normal’ is usually still overly coloured.

It’s this tv specifically: LG-43uf770v

I had a quick play around with the settings based on some youtube channel, specifically for the 770v models, but it’s still pretty crap.

Try viewing STW from various sources, the side bars are really black.

That TV seems to get good reviews everywhere so maybe it is defective.

Did you take the richer sounds extended warranty – I think that allows a cool off period.

I’d second going onto the AV forums and have a dig around for some detailed settings, they’re usually really thorough.

I had a similar experience to you when I bought a new, high-ish, end Samsung a few years ago, there was no real black to speak of and the picture seemed so over saturated. Half an hour of digging on the forums and the same time to go through every setting and the picture was unbelievably better. I’ve a different mode set for gaming and for TV viewing, haven’t touched the settings at all since.

I had all sorts of trouble with a new Sony at Xmas… Richer Sounds simply suggested I turn off all the fancy picture manipulation settings in the menus – sorted. Give them a call, they’re very good on the phone and they won’t give up until you’re happy.

Old Samsung LED broke…apparently obsolete so couldn’t have repaired if we wanted to.

Find this hard to believe.

I just fixed my Toshiba LED tv for the price of 3 diodes (about 80p) and a bit of time with a soldering iron.

Might be worth checking out recommend settings for your model on the AV Forums forum. Failing that contact the shop or manufacturer. Also check for reviews to see if that is a flaw of that model.

This, some AV geek will have tuned the, quite frankly, staggering ammount of options in all of the sub sub menus of the settings in order to get a natural picture. A good start is to turn off some of the top level processing bollocks.

Most TVS have all the enhancement turned on so they look great in the weird light of a shop.

Go into every menu and sub menu and advanced menu you can find and turn everything off or to standard/normal etc and start from there. There might be some guidance online on a forum but turning everything off is a good place to start. You can normally set it up to your taste quite quickly from there as you can adjust the basics from a good baseline and see if the special features do anything you like by turning them on one by one.

I set my Panasonic up this way and it worked great. Online guides worked a little but I found I adjusted things slightly differently.

Take it back? Or speak to the shop?

I’ve got that exact tv the black is good on mine, sounds like yours is faulty, have you tried the HD deep colour setting to see if it makes a difference? also it’s not so good if your looking at it from an angle. And the smart stuff is crap aswell

Have you asked forum member frankenstein? I’ve heard he’s quite good at sorting other people’s TV issues.

From the spec sheet in the link you posted:

Contrast RatioContrast ratio – from manufacturers informationNA

I there in lies the problem

As others have said, AVForums are very good for getting settings for specific tellies. When I got my Bravia a few years back I did some digging around and found the AVForums site, went through the settings and put everything as recommended, then spent some time watching anything with natural outdoor lighting; natural history programmes are ideal, or anything like Morse, Lewis, where you’ve got good light and natural flesh tones, and tweak things bit by bit.
I s’pose I spent a couple of hours overall until it just looked right and natural.
Things like sharpening, edge enhancement and the like can really mess things up, they have to be used with care, but can really make a difference used properly.