This is the one setting on your HDR TV most people don't know about — here's how to tweak it

(Image credit: LG)

On some 4K TVs, you'll find an option buried in the settings menu for something that refers to dynamic tone mapping or active tone mapping.

If you've happened to glance at this setting, ignored it and moved on, I don't blame you — it's a jargony collection of words and there's a good chance you already like how your TV looks.

However, if you're curious about this setting, I'm here to help clear the air. Depending on your viewing habits, you might find it to be useful.

What is tone mapping?

To understand tone mapping (and your TV’s dynamic tone mapping setting), let’s start with HDR.

These days, most TVs support High Dynamic Range (HDR), a picture format designed to take advantage of modern display capabilities — namely, their added brightness and color volume.

A split-screen comparison of non-HDR and HDR content, in which small boats by a dock at sunset look noticeably more colorful and lively on the HDR side of the image

As a result, an affordable, entry-level HDR TV — like the Samsung Q60D — doesn’t look as impressive when displaying HDR shows and movies as a higher-end TV, like the Samsung S95D. The S95D is one of the best OLED TVs on the market, and its superior brightness, color and overall contrast allow it to showcase HDR content in a way the ultra-affordable Q60D just can’t touch.

But despite its comparatively dim picture, the Q60D will still do a pretty decent job at displaying HDR content, and that’s due to a process called tone mapping.

With tone mapping, those mastering decisions can be adjusted to fit within a lesser display’s capabilities.

If a filmmaker masters an HDR movie for a peak brightness of 1,000 nits, most TVs won’t be able to reach that mark. With tone mapping, those mastering decisions can be adjusted to fit within a lesser display’s capabilities. That movie won’t look nearly as good on the Q60D as the S95D, but at the very least, it won’t look blown-out and weird.

Now that we’ve got a foundational understanding of HDR and tone mapping, let’s talk about dynamic tone mapping.

What is dynamic tone mapping for TVs?

Dolby Vision HDR compared to an HDR image. — (Image credit: Dolby)

There’s a very good chance your HDR TV supports either HDR10+, Dolby Vision or both. HDR10+ is more or less a royalty-free version of Dolby Vision, and both operate by embedding dynamic metadata into every scene of whatever you’re watching.

This allows your HDR TV to tap into a whole world of information from the filmmaker about how that content should look, frame by frame. It’s one of the reasons people are excited to watch movies and shows mastered for HDR10+ and Dolby Vision, as it does an exceptional job of preserving the creator’s intent.

Some TVs offer dynamic tone mapping, which aims to apply a similar process to HDR content that isn’t packed with metadata for your TV to analyze. Rather than read frame-by-frame metadata, dynamic tone mapping analyzes each frame and does its best to adjust the picture in real time.

Should I use my TV’s dynamic tone mapping setting?

If you’re not watching HDR content mastered for Dolby Vision or HDR10+, you may have the option to toggle this feature on and off.

Depending on your TV, this setting might be called Dynamic Tone Mapping, Active Tone Mapping (versus Static Tone Mapping) or Dynamic HDR (versus Standard HDR).

If you really want to get into the weeds, some newer TVs — like the LG G4 OLED — offer in-depth, “Professional” Dynamic Tone Mapping settings that allow the user to go even deeper into the dynamic tone mapping functionality.

Whether or not you should use these settings is a matter of personal preference ... It all comes down to what you think looks best.

Whether or not you should use these settings is a matter of personal preference. You may find that some HDR content — YouTube videos, Netflix shows and streaming services — are visually enhanced by your TV’s dynamic tone mapping setting. Colors might seem more vibrant and highlight detail (like the clouds closest to a blazingly bright sun) might come in more clearly.

However, I’ve often found this setting to be inconsistent. Darker scenes sometimes appear too bright with visual artifacts, or too dark and flat. It all depends on the TV and the content in question.

If you own a higher-end TV (like one of the top models in our best TVs round-up) and you’re committed to preserving the creator’s intent as much as possible, I recommend keeping this setting off by default, then adjusting it on the fly if you’re not watching Dolby Vision or HDR10+ content.

If you own a mid-range HDR TV (like the value-forward TCL QM6K Mini-LED TV), there’s a good chance you stand to get more out of this feature on account of the TV’s relatively limited performance — at least compared to a top-shelf model.

As with all things TV settings-related, it all comes down to what you think looks best.

More from Tom's Guide

TOPICS

Michael Desjardin is a Senior Editor for TVs at Tom's Guide. He's been testing and tinkering with TVs professionally for over a decade, previously for Reviewed and USA Today. Michael graduated from Emerson College where he studied media production and screenwriting. He loves cooking, zoning out to ambient music, and getting way too invested in the Red Sox. He considers himself living proof that TV doesn't necessarily rot your brain.