Watching "House of the Dragon" Season 2? Change the following three TV settings

Watching "House of the Dragon" Season 2? Change the following three TV settings

[While many fans may be eagerly awaiting the return of Damon Targaryen, played by Matt Smith, television may not be.

With more dragons hitting the silver screen in Season 2, they will want to make TV look beautiful for the big action sets and big reveals. Furthermore, while it is a running gag that "The House of Dragons" is one of the darkest shows on television, this season should eliminate the "too dark" complaint and make it less necessary to tinker with the TV's brightness.

Not even the best TVs can handle "House of Dragons" right out of the box. Fortunately, no matter what kind of TV you have, we have the perfect solution for this piece. So strap in and get your mead ready, because the best way to experience "The House of Dragons" is just a few clicks away.

It's arguably one of the most important settings on television: motion smoothing. Few people may know how important this setting is, but it is similar to how gamers turn off motion blur as soon as a new game is released.

Motion smoothing, also known as motion interpolation, is a new television setting that matches content to the frame rate of the television. This means that "House of the Dragon," which runs at 24 fps, will be pushed to 60 or 120 fps, depending on the TV.

While this may sound necessary for a film like "The Elden Ring," watching "House of the Dragon" at 60 fps won't get you much, let alone more. That said, motion smoothing is not necessary and should definitely be turned off.

Alternatively, you can simply go to Filmmaker Mode; on Tom'sGuide, Filmmaker Mode is the best picture mode for most entertainment experiences.

Announced for 2019, Filmmaker Mode removes unnecessary things such as the aforementioned motion smoothing and provides an entertainment experience that meets the same quality as what is shown in a traditional movie theater - only based on the processing power of the TV.

Given that this mode was introduced only four years ago, it is expected that it will only be available on televisions after 2020. Also, this mode is only standard on 4K TVs, so if your display falls outside of these requirements, you will have no choice but to turn off motion smoothing.

It is no secret that TVs tend to have rather lousy speaker systems. For this reason, we usually recommend getting one of the best Dolby Atmos soundbars to bring true audio immersion to your home entertainment needs.

However, there is one setting in particular that can help bring special life to "The House of Dragons." Not all televisions have such settings, but modern televisions have some means of audio boosting or dialogue boosting support that improves the intelligibility of the spoken word.

Not all TVs have the same name for this feature either. On Samsung's top-of-the-line TVs, it is sometimes called "Dialogue Clarity" or "Active Voice Amplifier"; on LG TVs, this setting is sometimes called "Clear Voice."

As such, this feature is not easily identifiable across the industry, so look for some sort of dialog enhancement feature in your TV's audio or sound settings to ensure that you do not hear Matt Smith's words.

If there is no such setting, you can also manually raise the highs and lower the lows. This is not a universal approach, but it will definitely help bring out the best that "House of Dragons" has to offer in Season 2.

Now, it may seem a bit counterintuitive to lower the brightness on one of the darkest shows available on the best streaming services, but it can have a negative impact on the overall look of the show. It is best to keep the brightness at a minimum, around 50%. This way, the images will not be washed out and dark scenes will appear more realistic and lifelike.

Similarly, increasing the contrast just a little will bring out the details. Increasing contrast will make shadows deeper in certain scenes and make the depth of the show pop in the best way possible.

You can also enhance the experience by turning up or down the backlight on your TV. If your living room is flooded with light, you will want to turn up the backlight; if your living room is like a dungeon (as it probably will be in "The House of Dragons"), you will want to turn down the backlight.

Looking for a new display to watch this season's most popular shows? Check out our top picks from the Best TV Guide for 2024.

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