PlayStation 5 picture settings- Although the PlayStation 5 in principle independently determines the image quality of the console, it does not hurt to check those image settings once. You may be able to improve the image or solve a particular problem with a specific adjustment. There is a good chance that the present problem is caused by a setting of your TV, but I will come back to that later in this article. First, let’s look at the picture quality settings within the PlayStation 5’s settings and what they do.
Playstation 5 Beeld Picture Settings
To access the PlayStation 5’s display settings, let’s go to the gear icon on the home screen. You will find it at the top right. Click on that and go to Screen and video in the menu. There you will find a number of options. To see exactly what your TV can handle, click the top option: About Video Output. You immediately get a good picture (!) of exactly what your TV can handle. You can largely be guided by that information; and you can use that info to diagnose problems.
For example, does the picture show that your TV can handle a resolution of 2160p, but do you notice that the signal does not go beyond 1080p? Then something goes wrong somewhere. You’ll probably see the word Automatic a lot on the Screen & Video page right now. For the most part, we leave it that way. The PlayStation 5 is in principle perfectly capable of determining the resolution (unless there is interference on the line) and the same applies to 4k video transfer rate. In addition, Sony certain functionalities also briefly.
4K video transfer rate
Take, for example, the aforementioned transfer rate (this has to do with the chroma subsampling. Under that setting it says that your image may blink when there are problems. This setting determines how much color is sent from a source to the TV. You have three levels: 4:2:0, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4. The last setting, which the PS5 uses by default, provides the most color information. If your TV does not respond well to this, you will lose frames and you will sometimes encounter black screens in between.
For example, you can choose -1 here, by pressing Automatic, then you fall back to 4:2:2. Or you choose -2 and then you switch to 4:2:0. This solves many known image problems. By the way, if you want to play in the 120 Hertz mode, as some games support, the PlayStation 5 will automatically turn on -1 (and therefore 4:2:2). The color information then deteriorates slightly, for a higher frame rate. The PlayStation just can’t handle both at the same time right now.
Speaking of that refresh rate: also click the part VRR.† That abbreviation stands for variable refresh rate. That option only works if your TV supports that option. If not, you can’t check the feature and leave it disabled. If you have a TV from 2021 or later, there is a good chance that VRR will simply work. VRR synchronizes the refresh rate of the display with the output of the game console, but at least there you have HDMI 2.1 necessary for.
High dynamic range and color gamut
For high dynamic range (HDR) you now have three options at your disposal: off, always on or on when needed. Because the PlayStation 5 also supports content in standard dynamic range (SDR) and can present it much too saturated with a wrong setting, it is nice to be able to fall back on that third option. Content in sdr will then be displayed normally, while hdr content will let the PlayStation 5 switch automatically. So the best option here is On if supported, so that all content is displayed correctly.
If you still have problems with the HDR image quality or if you play games in a different place (in the house or another house), it is a good idea to adjust the HDR settings again. You do this via adjusting HDR. The console then takes you along a few screens. As long as you do what is asked of you, you will be fine. With this information, the PS5 knows approximately the maximum brightness of your TV. You can just leave the option below, Deep Color Output, set to Automatic.
Finally, we have the RGB color range. Televisions and monitors deal differently with the information they receive from a source device, such as the PlayStation 5. By leaving the setting here on Automatic, you can be sure that the console always sends the correct info. When you manually adjust it to Full, the screen doesn’t change either (at least, with young TVs). If you do set it to Restricted, the screen will clearly switch (meaning that Full was already set).
TV picture settings
To ensure that your TV can properly process the information from your PlayStation 5, you may need to adjust some settings. There are now many types of TVs from many manufacturers, which run on all kinds of different software versions. This makes it difficult to write out specific actions for everyone, so I now try to steer everyone in the right direction in general terms. For example, you should always set the HDMI channel on which the PS5 displays to gaming mode, for example.
Many settings will therefore change automatically. But here too it doesn’t hurt to lend a helping hand to the TV. For example, you have to activate the HDR mode for the specific HDMI channel within the settings (you may have to look for terms such as deep color or high dynamic range). It is also a good idea to check whether HDMI 2.1 is activated. How you do that exactly also differs per TV — so you’ll have to figure that out yourself. So keep an eye on the TV manufacturer’s website during setup.
In addition, make sure that hdmi-cec is active on the channel of the PlayStation 5. If that function is turned off, there may be interference on the line so that certain information cannot be sent and you want to prevent that. Finally, some (OLED) televisions have an option for managing your black levels. It is often a good idea to switch off automatic modes of televisions, but in this case automatic black level control is what you want. And read this article about HGIG carefully for more information.
