TV Setup Checklist Generator
Select your TV brand and type, then pick what you're setting up — wall mount, streaming, soundbar, gaming and more. Get a personalised checklist you can tick off step by step, then print or save it.
What brand is your new TV?
Your brand determines the exact menu paths and brand-specific settings in your checklist.
What type of TV is it?
Panel type affects specific setup steps — OLED needs burn-in care, QLED has local dimming settings.
What are you setting up? Select all that apply
Each goal adds relevant steps to your checklist. Pick everything you plan to do.
The 5 Mistakes New TV Buyers Make in the First Hour
Most setup problems aren't hardware failures — they're skipped steps. These are the five issues that generate the most TV support calls in the first week of ownership.
TVs ship in Vivid or Dynamic picture mode for showroom floors — maximum brightness, over-saturated colours, sharpness cranked so high it adds halos. This mode is accurate for zero lighting conditions. Switch to Cinema or Movie mode within the first 10 minutes. You'll immediately notice more natural skin tones and less eye fatigue.
A brand-new TV often has months-old firmware installed at the factory. Skipping the update means missing bug fixes, improved app performance, and sometimes critical security patches. Always connect to Wi-Fi and run the system update before configuring anything else.
Only one HDMI port on your TV carries the ARC or eARC signal for soundbar audio. It's labelled on the port. Plugging a soundbar into any other port means no audio return — you'll get picture but no sound from the soundbar, or sound that can't be controlled by your TV remote.
Motion smoothing (called TruMotion on LG, Auto Motion Plus on Samsung, MotionFlow on Sony) makes movies look like cheap soap operas by adding interpolated frames. It's enabled by default on nearly every TV. Turn it off in picture settings, or set it to minimum. This is the single most impactful picture quality change you can make.
Eco mode and auto-brightness sensors constantly dim the screen in response to ambient light — the image goes dark mid-scene. While well-intentioned, most people find it distracting. Disable both the eco/energy-saving mode and the ambient light sensor in picture settings, then manually set brightness to a comfortable level.
Picture Settings Worth Adjusting on Any TV
After switching to Cinema or Movie mode, these are the six settings that make the biggest real-world difference.
How to Get the Most From Your Smart TV in the First Week
Smart TV operating systems have improved significantly — Tizen (Samsung), webOS (LG), Google TV (Sony, TCL), and Roku TV (TCL, Hisense) are all genuinely good. But they come pre-loaded with apps and features that slow down the home screen. A few quick changes make a big difference.
Connect your TV to a 5GHz Wi-Fi network rather than 2.4GHz if both are available. The 5GHz band is faster and less congested. For 4K streaming you need at least 25 Mbps sustained speed — run a speed test through the TV's network settings to confirm. If speeds are low, a powerline adapter or Wi-Fi extender near the TV is more reliable than moving the router.
Sign in to streaming apps using your phone or computer first, then use "already a member" on the TV rather than typing passwords with a remote. Every major service lets you activate a TV with a code you enter on your phone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Professional ISF calibration costs $200–$400 and is worth it if you have a premium OLED or high-end LCD in a dedicated home theater room. For a living room TV, the manual adjustments in the checklist get you 80–90% of the way there for free. The biggest wins — switching to Cinema mode, disabling motion smoothing, setting sharpness to zero — are all free. Professional calibration refines the remaining 10-20% using colorimeters and pattern generators.
OLED TVs benefit from a break-in period of approximately 100 hours before running a pixel refresh cycle (found in Settings → Support → Self Diagnosis or similar). During the first 100 hours, avoid static images for extended periods and use a lower brightness setting. After the initial period, the panel stabilises. Modern OLEDs have sophisticated automatic pixel-care systems that run during standby — leaving the TV on standby rather than unplugging it allows these to run.
Almost always: you're comparing a showroom Vivid mode TV to your home Cinema mode TV, and the problem is actually that your home setup looks more accurate. The showroom TV is running at 1000+ nits of brightness with all image processing cranked up — impressive at a distance under fluorescent lights but fatiguing in a home. Your Cinema mode TV with proper settings will look better for extended watching. The exception: if your room is very dark and you're using a very low backlight setting, the picture may genuinely look dim — increase the backlight for your lighting conditions.
Rule: gaming console (PS5 or Xbox) in HDMI 1 or 2 (the 2.1 ports on modern TVs, which support 4K/120Hz). Soundbar in the port labelled ARC or eARC. Streaming sticks in any remaining port. If you have more devices than ports, use an HDMI switch ($25–$40) rather than constantly swapping cables — modern 4-port HDMI switches are nearly lossless and have remotes. Check the TV spec sheet to confirm which ports are 2.0 vs 2.1 — most TVs have 1-2 HDMI 2.1 ports and 2-3 HDMI 2.0 ports.
Yes — always, and do it first. Firmware that ships on the TV was finalised months before the unit left the factory. Updates frequently include app performance improvements, fixes for Wi-Fi connectivity, audio sync corrections, and stability patches. Connect to Wi-Fi, go to Settings → Support → Software Update → Update Now (Samsung) or similar for your brand. The update usually takes 5–10 minutes and the TV restarts automatically. Do this before configuring any other settings.
