LG wants to reinvent how you think of TV picture modes

Is the world ready to move beyond movie, standard, and vivid? LG seems to think so. The company’s new 2023 TVs let you create a personalized picture mode.

Setting up a new TV? Ask any videophile or home theater nerd and they’ll probably tell you to set your picture mode to the movie/cinema option (or whatever’s closest on your particular TV) and leave it there. Traditionally, this has been the most color accurate option and leans toward a pleasant, warm white balance instead of the cooler temperature that usually accompanies “standard” modes. But there are inevitably those people who prefer the standard or vivid settings — much to the chagrin of enthusiasts.

With its new 2023 TV lineup, LG is throwing these conventional choices out the window — if you’re willing to try — and has come up with a new way of personalizing your picture preferences. Instead of giving you a few labeled options to switch between, a new “Personalized Picture Wizard” will present you with a series of images. On each screen, you choose one or two that look best to you.

After you do this six times, the TV will formulate a preset that’s based on your selections. It considers the brightness, color, and contrast levels that you indicated a preference for. LG says a ton of AI deep learning is involved throughout this process; it sampled millions of images in creating the Picture Wizard. If you’re ready to see how your picture mode looks while watching real content, you can hit “apply.”

Obviously LG will still be offering the tried and true picture settings along with deeper calibration options; your personalized picture mode will appear right alongside those in the settings menu on 2023 LG TVs. So you can easily switch between all of them and see the differences. For now, you can only create one personalized picture mode that applies to everyone using the same TV, but LG told me that it eventually wants to let each user profile make their own.

Until I can thoroughly test one of LG’s new TVs later this year, I can’t say whether Personalized Picture Wizard will actually deliver great results or wind up as just another AI gimmick. But I still find it to be an interesting rethinking of the longstanding, more rigid approach. Home theater enthusiasts might deem it sacrilegious, and if you’re looking for standardized reference white balance and color, obviously this isn’t for you. But remember that the feature is completely optional. It’s novel. Can’t hurt to try it and see what happens.