U8Q Vidaa (and others?) Non intuitive settings explained..
Hi all.
Audio visual engineer by trade here. I tend to poke into settings a lot. Its my job!
This might be helpful. Certainly applies for EU U8Q on vidaa, and probably applies to a large range of other models.
Local dimming:
'Strenth' order actually goes off-low-high-medium from lowest to highest setting.
Adaptive contrast similarly weird:
'Strength' goes off-medium-low-high from lowest to highest setting.
What this actually means.
Local dimming...don't have it off because then you have the equivalent of a non-local dimming LED / LCD screen. The setting labelled 'medium' provides the strongest local dimming, most 'pop' it's the setting id recommend most but it may make dimly lit scenes crush to black too hard, in which case id recommend dropping it back to medium (labelled high) to bring up your shadow detail a little.
Adaptive contrast makes the biggest impact to image quality. Probably the most powerful setting inside your TV to adjust to your own taste.
On low (labelled medium) you get very mild contrast boosting, and the image largely remains faithful to the original source footage.
On medium and high (labelled low & high) a more powerful pronouced algorithm kicks in which actually alters the source footage (significantly) to make the image 'pop' a lot more...artificial HDR type of effect. Pushes shadows darker and sharpens highs to enhance detail. Looks great EXCEPT for darkly lit scenes. See any big halos around people's faces? That's an artefact of this setting. Want to kill that glowing halo? Goto low (labelled medium) at the cost of no longer benefiting from its sharpening magic.
These two settings almost can be played off each other a little bit..so say for example you like the dynamic contrast at its most powerful setting, but are seeing strong halos around faces in dark scenes, you can try and steer that away a little by dropping your local dimming back a notch to medium strength (labelled high remember) which will pull up the shadow detail a little and help reduce the haloing.
But if the really big halos annoy you, then only option is to forget adaptive contrast and put it on its lowest setting (labelled medium) and then you might as well put local dimming to high strength (labelled medium also) to get maximum pop that way with a more 'true' image.
Confusing right.
Play around and it will make sense!
Key takeaways:
Local dimming : off-low-high-medium
Adaptive contrast : off-medium-low-high