Your TV Is Ruining Stranger Things—Fix These Settings Before Season 5
A leading filmmaker warns a new playback tweak will destroy color and betray the intended look, reigniting a bitter fight over who controls the image audiences see on their screens.
Before you fire up Stranger Things season 5 tonight, Ross Duffer would like a quick word with your TV. Yes, your TV. The co-creator jumped on Instagram with a pre-game PSA about picture settings that could make your binge look, well, wrong.
Do this before you hit play
Duffer basically walked through how to de-gunk your TV so the show looks the way it was actually made. The names vary by brand, but here’s the gist of what he wants you to change:
- Open your TV settings and head into Picture Mode. If there’s an Expert or Advanced section, go there.
- Turn off Dynamic Contrast.
- Turn off Super Resolution.
- Find motion smoothing and turn it off. On some sets it’s labeled TruMotion.
- Do not use Vivid mode. It flips on a bunch of processing that wrecks color and detail.
"Whatever you do, don’t turn on anything called 'Vivid'. It’s gonna turn on the worst offenders, it’s gonna destroy the color and is not the filmmaker’s intent."
He also called out Dynamic Contrast and Super Resolution by name and didn’t mince words, referring to those settings as "garbage" and the Expert menu as full of "a bunch of crap" you should switch off. The point: these features add artificial sharpening, extra contrast, and silky-smooth motion that might look good on a showroom floor but steamroll the image the showrunners actually graded.
Why he’s saying it now
This is creators trying to get ahead of the inevitable "why is it so dark/washed out?" discourse. We all remember Game of Thrones season 8’s The Long Night drama and the wave of people discovering their TVs were the real enemy. Duffer’s trying to save you from that tonight. If the menu names on your set don’t perfectly match what he mentioned, look for similarly phrased toggles in Picture/Advanced settings and kill anything that sounds like smoothing, enhancement, or vivid/boosted modes.
It’s a two-minute tune-up that will spare you from soap-opera sheen and neon skin tones. Do your TV a favor before Hawkins calls.