Smart TVs come with dozens of parameters that we can configure to our liking. However, it is normal for our television to come by default with a series of settings that are the ones that the manufacturer considers can be adapted to a larger audience. We usually touch the picture modes when we start watching a movie or even disable certain settings when we connect a console to the TV. However, there is one setting you should disable forever, and that is noise reduction.
What is noise reduction for?
Image: Topaz Labs
Noise reduction is one of those functions that is usually activated by default and that will not benefit you on almost any occasion. If you have ever activated noise reduction on your mobile camera, it works in a very similar way on television. Noise reduction succeeds in softening the image at the cost of reducing its quality and sharpness . At a professional level, there are programs that are capable of doing this process with the static image and obtaining good results —Photoshop or the Topaz image that you just saw are good examples—, but the same does not happen with televisions.
This functionality is useful when we watch low-quality videos , such as a low-resolution video on YouTube or an old recording that we have converted to digital format. However, when viewing a high-quality video stream, the result after noise reduction will be less sharp video. Therefore, deactivating the adjustment will help us to recover a precise, natural and quality image.
How to disable noise reduction on your Smart TV
The process will vary depending on the brand of your television, but as a general rule, to deactivate this parameter you will have to follow these steps:
- Go to your TV menu . You can usually access it by pressing the gear button on your remote.
- Now go to the image settings of the Smart TV.
- Now, you will have to locate any setting that mentions noise reduction . It may go by other names like ‘ Image Smoothing ‘. If you can’t find it, go into the advanced settings or expert settings . All televisions allow you to disable this parameter, so it must be hidden somewhere.
- There are televisions in which there are two different types of noise reduction:
- MPEG Noise Reduction : it is the least important reduction. What it does is reduce the noise around the edges of the image. You can disable this setting if you want.
- Dynamic/Digital Noise Reduction (DNR) – This is the setting you need to turn off to remove digital picture smoothing on your smart TV. This type of noise reduction is more interesting because it analyzes each frame and removes pixels that are not constant in the image. Despite the fact that the DNR uses very advanced precision algorithms, the truth is that it will almost never compensate for the general loss of quality that we are going to have in the image with respect to the quality gained by noise reduction. For that reason, it is better to disable this setting forever.
