Analysis | Why China 'Bad Bank' Huarong's Fall Is Big Bad News - Washington Post

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What happens when a company set up by the Chinese government to help clean up toxic debt in the country’s banking system gets into trouble itself? We’re finding out now. Investors were spooked in April after China Huarong Asset Management Co., one of the country’s biggest distressed asset managers, failed to release financial statements in the wake of the execution of its former top executive for bribery. That raised questions about its financial health -- and broader worries about whether China would let an institution backed by the central government fail. The ending of a presumed safety net that’s long been priced into Chinese bond values would mean a seismic shift for investors across emerging markets.

1. What’s China Huarong?

It’s one of the four state-owned firms set up by China’s government in 1999 to help clean up a banking system riddled with bad debt. The firm was left reeling in 2018 after then-chairman Lai Xiaomin was accused of bribery and ultimately found guilty of receiving 1.79 billion yuan ($281 million) in illicit payments. Under his watch, China Huarong expanded into areas including securities trading, trusts and other investments, deviating from its original mandate of disposing of bad debt. Lai was sentenced to death and executed in January, in an unusually harsh sentence for such a crime.

2. How did it get in trouble?

China Huarong failed to release its 2020 financial reports by a March 31 deadline, which prompted a trading halt in its shares and structured products in Hong Kong. Concerns about the firm’s financial health were sent into overdrive after reports emerged, during weeks of near-silence from officialdom, of a potential restructuring or default. Bondholders, panicked about the prospect of taking a haircut on their investments, confused by conflicting news reports and operating in an information vacuum, spurred wild swings in the firm’s offshore and and local bonds.

3. Why the panic?

Any signs that Beijing is rethinking its support for a linchpin firm like China Huarong would have deep repercussions for the broader market. (The company is majority owned by China’s Ministry of Finance and is deeply intertwined with the nation’s $54 trillion financial industry.) Authorities have long sought to wean investors off the assumption that the government will step in to prevent defaults. Yet despite official talk about letting market forces have their way, nearly all bond valuations involve some assumption of state support. Any change in that would involve a fundamental reassessment of the way investors and rating companies look at the credit risk of Chinese companies. A potential restructuring or default at Huarong could put other firms at risk, since China’s local bond market is dominated by other state-linked borrowers.

4. How is Huarong coping?

The firm has said it has access to liquidity and is making payments on time. While it seems China Huarong’s units were able to find cash to repay imminently maturing bonds -- and the nation’s financial regulator also has said the firm has ample liquidity -- most of the dollar notes are still trading in the region of 60 to 80 cents -- a level that’s nearly unheard of for a borrower like China Huarong that was once considered to hold quasi-sovereign status. Some its dollar-denominated notes hit fresh lows in late May.

5. Is there a fix?

People familiar with the matter said the company had submitted an overhaul plan to regulators, and that China’s central bank was considering assuming more than 100 billion yuan of assets from its unprofitable units. Huarong is also said to have secured funding support from state-owned banks to ensure it can repay debt through at least the end of August. But investors remain worried amid conflicting signals about the company’s fate, including confusion over the firm’s leadership. Bloomberg News has reported that the appointment of Liang Qiang, who currently heads another bad-debt manager, as Huarong’s new president is said to be on track. But Chinese media outlet Caixin reported that Liang didn’t accept the appointment.

6. How deep is Huarong’s hole?

China Huarong and its subsidiaries have about $41 billion outstanding in local and offshore bonds alone. Of that, global investors have some $21.7 billion at stake in dollar notes. Because the company was considered a quasi-sovereign, investment-grade borrower, that debt was popular among institutional investors including BlackRock Inc., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Allianz SE. The lack of clarity over the likelihood of potential losses has also left the dollar bonds in no man’s land: they’re too expensive for distressed traders but too risky for some of its usual buyers.

7. Is Huarong the only state-linked firm in trouble?

No. Chinese President Xi Jinping has dialed back support for weaker borrowers to reduce moral hazard, and state-owned enterprises have replaced their private counterparts as the country’s biggest source of defaults. SOEs reneged on a record 79.5 billion yuan of local bonds in 2020, lifting their share of onshore payment failures to 57% from 8.5% a year earlier, according to Fitch Ratings. The figure jumped to 72% in the first quarter of 2021.

8. What about China’s other bad banks?

The three other state-backed, distressed-loan managers aren’t faring much better. The industry has been facing rising pressure over the past year as the pandemic made it harder to dispose of assets. Increasing credit losses at the managers themselves are hurting profits and undermining capital strength, not to mention maturity mismatches as most of their liabilities are short-term. The four so-called AMCs have nearly $50 billion in outstanding dollar bonds, including China Huarong’s $21.7 billion and $18.5 billion at China Cinda Asset Management Co. The others, Orient Asset Management China Co. and China Great Wall Asset Management Co., had $5.3 billion and $4 billion respectively. Altogether they need to refinance or repay some $4.9 billion of maturing notes through the rest of 2021, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

9. How big is the broader risk?

The stress at China Huarong has spilled over into the nation’s broader $860 billion market for dollar bonds. These borrowers could find themselves in trouble if there’s a dramatic reassessment of the risks tied up in buying this debt. The stakes are high as Beijing considers which companies to support. SOEs had the equivalent of $3 trillion in onshore bonds outstanding at the end of last year, or 91% of the total, data compiled by Fitch show. A small but growing portion of those bonds is now owned by international money managers, after a steady relaxation of China’s restrictions on foreign investment in recent years.

(Updates with leadership appointment in section 5, bond moves)

More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

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This Chilean robotic process automation startup raises US $ 2.1 million with the participation of Mexican investors - Entrepreneur

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Rocketbot will use much of its second round of Pre Series A funding to expand the platform globally. Its immediate goal is to open offices in Brazil, the United States and Europe and continue expanding in Mexico.

May 31, 2021 4 min read

This article was translated from our Spanish edition using AI technologies. Errors may exist due to this process.

From a small initiative of two partners that caught the attention of Google, to become one of the main global RPA (robotic process automation) tools, this is what the Chilean startup Rocketbot managed to achieve in less than three years. Now, that explosive walk has been further consolidated for the company after raising an investment in the Pre Series A Round for 2.1 million dollars.

A large part of the investment corresponds to Grupo Consorcio - a leading financial services company and the largest insurance group in the Chilean market, with a presence in Insurance, Bank, Prevision and Savings -, which agreed to make an investment in Rocketbot, a platform for companies to be able to create your own process automation bots and already has more than 200 clients in the region.

In addition to Consorcio and VC Manutara Ventures, Rocketbot received capital from two Mexican companies - Compusoluciones and the regional venture capital firm and administrator of the Carabela Fund, Angel Ventures Guadalajara. The contribution of these companies will allow the Chilean startup to grow not only in the Mexican market, but also worldwide, since the immediate destination of these funds is the opening of physical offices in Brazil, Europe and the United States, in addition to continuing to develop tools that facilitate consolidation in Mexico.

The CEO of Rocketbot, Juan Jorge Herrera, explained that “this capital raise comes in the middle of a search for expansion of operations in different continents. We are a highly competitive tool that continues with the goal of positioning ourselves globally and making alliances with world brands and large regional partners. In addition, with this capital, it will seek to continue the development of the tool, strengthening cybersecurity and integrating new functions related to artificial intelligence and automation in different verticals ”.

For his part, Javier Sánchez from Angel Ventures, reinforces the purpose of giving a digital boost to Mexican companies -and the region- through friendly technology such as Rocketbot. "There is great potential, and need, for Mexican companies to increase their productivity through technology, and we are convinced that the solution offered by Rocketbot, through a first-rate team, is the best option."

^{David Cuello, Co-founder and CTO of Rocketbot, Juan Jorge Herrera, CEO of Rocketbot and Rafael Fuentes, Co-founder and CCO of Rocketbot.
Photo: Courtesy}

Meanwhile, Andrés Medina de Compusoluciones highlighted that “in Rocketbot we have found a great alternative to carry out the digital transformation of companies through an easy-to-implement technology, such as RPA. In addition, the tools created by Rocketbot are very well adapted to companies in different segments, so we can expand our presence in the region under a model very similar to ours ”.

Perfecting Rocketbot

Rocketbot recently partnered with Google to integrate AI into their bots so that they are capable of digitizing scanned, photographed or handcrafted documents; In addition, at the end of last year, Gartner, the most recognized technology consultancy in the world, classified them as the second best RPA platform in the world for midsize companies (annual turnover of up to 1 billion dollars).

“We do not conceive of a technological revolution, such as robotic automation, without it being a democratizing process. That is why we are committed to the globalization of Rocketbot, a tool that makes RPA an easy and enjoyable process whether you are a large company or an SME ”, highlighted the cofounder and Commercial Director of the Startup, Rafael Fuentes.

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Midwest Brewery Is Looking For ‘Bad Dad Of The Year’ - Forbes

How bad is Google Photos’ compression anyway? - The Verge

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Google Photos has long offered one of the best deals in all of photo storage: it’ll back up your entire library for free, so long as it can compress the images a bit. But as of tomorrow, June 1st, that deal goes away, and you’re now eating through Google storage (which you may have to pay for) whether your images are compressed or not.

With the change looming, I’ve been wondering how bad Google’s compression actually is. Does the compression leave my photos in “High Quality,” as Google has claimed for years? Or does the compression degrade my photos enough to make it worth using more storage by switching over to “Original Quality” backups?

I ran some quick tests this morning to find out. I took some photos and videos from my Pixel 5 (one of a few phones that will continue to get free compressed storage) and a photo from my Fuji X-T30 and uploaded them to two separate Google Photos accounts, one with compression turned on and one that maintained original quality.

The results were mixed. For photos, the compressed versions were often indistinguishable from their uncompressed counterparts. But once you’re losing resolution, the compression really starts to show.

Here’s what I found across a handful of tests. You can click the images to view them at a larger size.

Here’s a photo I took recently of my cat, Pretzel. I zoomed in on his hair, his eyes, and the books in the background, and I can’t find a difference. The photo, taken on a Pixel 5, was originally 3.4MB but was compressed down to 1.5MB.

I took this picture on Yale’s campus last weekend with the Pixel 5’s ultrawide camera. Both versions look great while in full screen on my computer. You could probably make an argument about whether there’s some more noises around the edges of the leaves in the compressed version, but I’m generally of the mindset that if you have to search for image issues, they don’t really matter.

The space saving isn’t very substantial here: Google’s compression takes the file size from 7.3MB to 5.7MB.

Here’s a photo I took this morning of Pretzel on my Fuji X-T30. I zoomed in on his face, and couldn’t find a difference even when both were blown up as large as Google Photos could make them.

At first, it seemed like this was a situation where Google Photos’ compression won out: the file size shrank from 12MB to just 662KB, and the images look practically identical.

But there’s one very notable difference. Google caps photo resolution at 16 megapixels, which shrank the photo significantly from the original 26 megapixel file my camera saved. Here’s a zoomed-in crop showing how the detail starts to disappear as blocky noise comes in:

Now look, I don’t know that I need all 26 megapixels of this image at this point in time. But if I ever wanted to print this photo in a larger format, crop it down the road, or otherwise make changes to it, those extra pixels would be a huge advantage to have retained.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with 1080p video, but there is something wrong with the way Google processes it. And unfortunately, if you use Google’s compression, all your videos will be compressed at 1080p.

When that happens, everything becomes smudgy, details just vanish, and some colors even lose their pop. It’s a really significant downgrade in terms of quality. I’m not able to embed a Google Photos video here, so I included a screenshot comparison above. I think you can see most of the differences, although it’s much clearer how blurry text becomes at larger sizes.

I originally recorded this video in 4K back on my Pixel 5 back in February. It looks nice enough on my not-4K computer screen. Street signs, faces, and the falling snow all look sharp. But the compressed version is kind of a mess — it looks like I recorded it with a layer of grease on my camera lens.

The loss (or savings) of data is a big one here: it falls from 55MB for this 10 second clip to just 6MB. No wonder it looks so much worse.

I still came away mostly impressed by the quality maintained after Google’s compression. For photos, the result can be nearly indistinguishable so long as the original file is under 16 megapixels. But for videos, there’s no question that uncompressed is the way to go. It’s too bad that Google doesn’t let you set different options for photos and videos.

The real drawback is that compressing your photos doesn’t always save a ton of space. That extra space definitely adds up as you push thousands of new photos into the cloud each year. But if you’re going to have to pay anyway, it might be worth maintaining your photos — and especially your videos — at their full quality, especially if you’re uploading them in higher resolutions.

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UPS-backed startup Ally Commerce files $1.5M raise - Atlanta Business Chronicle

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This North Park startup just got backed by GoFundMe founder and Ex-Googler. Here’s why - The San Diego Union-Tribune

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Two of San Diego’s best-known tech entrepreneurs have quietly invested in a little-known software startup in North Park called WowYow.

Andy Ballester, the co-founder of tech giant GoFundMe, invested his own personal funds into the startup, along with institutional money from Launch Factory, the startup studio founded by ex-Googler Brad Chisum.

WowYow’s technology is still in its infancy, and the investors say much work needs to be done before they’re willing to predict a slam dunk. But Chisum is bullish.

“This one has the potential to be one of the most exciting things out of San Diego,” Chisum said. “If it’s what Andy and I think it is, this could disrupt computer vision AI and cause all the big boys to realize how far behind they are.”

What WowYow is building

WowYow was founded in 2016, but the software is pretty new — it didn’t scale until 2019. The company’s most valuable piece of software can analyze the content of a video, determine what the video is about, and then attach categorical tags, or metadata, to the piece of content. In other words, they are using computer vision to “see” videos without manually watching them.

This can be valuable for many reasons. Right now, the startup is using the technology to help publishers like The Hill, Gannett and CNN Newsource to automate the placement of relevant advertisements on their video content. It also helps advertisers serve targeted ads without violating privacy protections such as user tracking, blocked by the European Union and California.

“In 2021, you can’t really advertise with user tracking at all anymore,” said Jarett Boskovich, co-founder and chief marketing officer at WowYow. “So we don’t. We don’t have to target advertising on users at all. It can be completely contextual.”

The software has many options to deliver an ad, including common advertising methods like pre-rolls. One novel method is for WowYow’s tech to “read” the video, identify items or people in the frame, and then make the video “shoppable.”

This means, as a viewer, you could see a video of Taylor Swift wearing a blue dress, click on the blue dress, and be taken to a retailer website that sells that dress (or one like it). That’s what Boskovich means about contextual advertising.

WowYow has over 5,000 advertisers in its network, and can automatically generate ads and fill them into an unmonetized slot. The startup exploded in 2020 when publishers were desperate to help monetize their content during the pandemic while print advertising slumped.

“We went from serving 10 million ads a month to over 100 million ads a month in one year,” said Jarett Boskovich, co-founder and chief marketing officer at WowYow.

The company is currently serving in the range of 250 million ads a month.

But are the ads effective?

“WowYow doesn’t track user conversions for advertisers,” Boskovich wrote in an email. “Our metric for advertisers/marketers is focused on getting their offer in front of video audiences on premium publisher sites and driving highly qualified and targeted traffic.”

Investors see far more applications than adtech

Founded by two brothers, Jarett and Adam Boskovich, along with friend Michael Ramirez, WowYow started off in adtech because that lined up with their history.

Jarett had experience doing ad sales at a local San Diego newspaper company, San Diego Community News Network, which published Uptown News and Gay San Diego, among others. He saw a need for this type of technology.

But the founders of WowYow — and their investors — see huge potential in the company’s base technology.

“WowYow’s first iteration is adtech,” Ballester said. “But what excites me is that you can use that core AI technology on a lot of different things.”

Ballester, who’s also working at Chisum’s studio, said Launch Factory plans to help the founders create several spin-off companies built off the core AI technology. All parties were mum on specifics but said they can imagine applications in worker safety in large facilities (identifying prone positions that might flag a safety issue).

“It would be difficult to cover all those cameras in real-time with human eyes, but with computer vision that could be done all the time and potentially lead to better worker safety in big warehouses and factories,” Ballester said.

WowYow was a graduate of San Francisco’s Nex Cubed accelerator but participated virtually from San Diego. WowYow is making money through a revenue share with its clients but is not yet profitable.

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How I learned to love my competitors as a startup founder - The Next Web

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Love your competitors? You might think I’ve got a screw loose, as this doesn’t sound like the mantra ambitious startups need to become market leaders. 

But hear me out, it’s not as absurd as it sounds.

Instead of spending your time obsessing over competing businesses doing better than your company, take the time to analyze what exactly they’re doing right. Once you’ve identified that, you’ll find the space and the methods for your own business to grow and prosper. 

And how do I know? Because that’s exactly what happened to me.

Flashback to the early days

First, let’s take a walk down memory lane. Truth be told, I haven’t always believed in ‘loving’ my competitors. Putting my business on the map was a grueling learning process, a tale of high ambitions, long working hours, good faith, broken trust, and even envy of other successful businesses — well, yeah, I’m only human. 

When Tara Kaboli and I co-founded Wesual in 2018, we’d been working several years as freelance architecture photographers for local real estate agencies, and companies such as Airbnb. 

At one point, I found I had more work coming in than I could execute myself, and that’s when I decided to launch a platform that could connect businesses with the right professionals who could provide photography and videography services in their region. 

In this business model, Wesual would be the middleman, connecting the parties and guaranteeing quality output through an in-house team of post-production experts.

(Spoiler alert: we’re doing great now, with plans to expand to several European countries, a solid investor base, and growing numbers that reflect the hard work we put in.)

Self-made founders

In the early days though, all we had was an idea and the drive to make things happen. We had no prior business experience or know-how around what it took to launch a startup. 

There were no external investors, which led to continuous cash flow challenges. We were photographing during the day, and doing post-production — on other photographers’ work for Wesual clients — at night. It was downright crazy!

Sure, there was a romantic feel to it, but was it sustainable? No, not in the slightest.

Turning things around

After a while, we decided it was time to leave that way of working behind and professionalize by entering an acceleration program. Through that acceleration process, we learned what we needed to turn Wesual into a prospering startup company. 

We learned to delegate and keep an overview of the business. We learned to form a multi-expertise team around us, and to validate ideas and strategies in-house. We learned to develop a strategy for the future and stick to it.

Dive into your ‘blue ocean’

One of the biggest challenges for us was realizing that the market needs competitors. They helped us find our blue ocean — the market segment Wesual could focus on to grow. 

By identifying and analyzing the strategies implemented by other businesses, we were able to assess market interests in segments already tested by our competitors. It helped us to develop a successful go-to-market strategy for our own company.

Embrace the competition (and 2 other key takeaways)

I guess the bottom line is: don’t see successful challengers in your industry as obstacles on your way to success. Learn from them and tailor your strategy accordingly. Analyze their lessons learned and take an agile approach to incorporate them into your business plan.

Oh, and make sure to gather a team of specialists to bridge gaps in your own skillset. It will help you to grow faster and develop a better product. Don’t do everything by yourself, but learn to delegate. And if you can’t find the right expertise in-house, make sure to seek it out there — through an acceleration program, for example.

It’s the only way you and your co-founders will learn to stop doing everything yourselves and create a team that can grow a successful business. And don’t forget to love your competitors! If you look closely, they’ve done quite a lot of groundwork for you.

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Julius Randle, Knicks aren't as bad as they've looked, but expectations were probably outsized from the start - CBS Sports

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The New York Knicks finishing the truncated 2020-21 regular season on a 47-win pace, good enough for the East's No. 4 seed, caught everyone by surprise. Julius Randle's sudden All-NBA leap was equally unforeseen. Obviously, these are not mutually exclusive developments. The Knicks are what they are -- and we'll get to what, exactly, they are -- because of Randle being just enough of an offensive savior to survive on the strength of a top-five defense. 

That correlation works the opposite way, too. Randle has been awful in his first postseason, and so have the Knicks, who lost again to the Atlanta Hawks on Sunday to fall behind 3-1 in their first-round series with the potential elimination game looming on Wednesday. 

Through the first three games, Randle shot 24 percent (13-for-54) from the field. Among players who've taken at least 50 shots, that was the worst three-game start to a postseason in the shot-clock era. Throw in R.J. Barrett's 13-for-38, and New York's best two players -- or at least the two players we look at as the truest barometer of what this team might, or might not, become -- shot 28 percent as New York fell into a 2-1 hole. 

The Game 4 numbers look better on paper:

• Randle: 23 points, 10 rebounds, seven assists
  
• Barrett: 12 points, six rebounds, four assists
  

Together, Barrett and Randle shot 15-for-34 from the field on Sunday. They were a collective minus-24 in their 70 minutes. If numbers don't always tell the story, these ones, through four games of this series, do. Randle isn't even close to as bad as he's looked in this series. But he and Barrett are clearly not ready to be the top players on a team that expects to be something more than a nice regular-season story. There's little clarity as to whether they ever will be. 

And that's the point of this. The Knicks are a fun team to root for, and they had a fantastic season against the bar of having been a national embarrassment for basically the last decade. But when you raise that bar to a postseason level, reality hits quick. 

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Barrett made significant strides this season, but the jury remains out as to whether he can be more than a complementary piece. The same can be said as it pertains to whether Randle is actually a bankable star. He's not great at any one thing. The fear was always a shooting regression, which would render a lot of his progress moot. Right now, all we know for sure is he had a great regular season only to go in the tank when a postseason defense is focused on him. 

This is a small sample and Randle's first trip to the postseason. Cut him some slack. Also, Tom Thibodeau deserves at least a bit of blame for Randle's offensive nosedive. No adjustments have been made throughout this series. The Knicks mostly give Randle the ball with little pace to their attack, he sizes things up, maybe gets a ball screen, and tries to self create. The Hawks are cutting off penetration, and his pull-up jumpers are bricking. 

You can say this performance is just bad shooting luck at the worst possible time, and surely there's some truth in that. But look back over Randle's career, and there's a lot more evidence that he isn't a great shooter than anything suggesting that he is. A lot more evidence that he isn't a star than he is. Same with Barrett, whose future prospects are predominantly tied to his jumper. And look at the bottom line: The Knicks, even amid a career season for Randle and a really good season for Barrett, were just the 24th-ranked offense in the league. 

They won on the strength of their defense, and there was even some shooting luck baked into that. They packed the paint and prioritized collective rim protection, and the result in the regular season was surrendering a lot of 3-pointers, especially from the corner. Teams just missed a lot of those shots. 

Per Cleaning the Glass, teams shot a collective 33.8 percent from beyond the arc against the Knicks in the regular season, the worst mark against any defense in the league, and 35.1 percent on corner 3-pointers, the second-worst mark in the league. The Hawks, in part because of Trae Young's pick-and-roll creation and slingshot passes to shooters, are getting those same shots but making more (over 47 percent from the corner) of them. Atlanta holds a 27-point advantage from 3-point range over the series. That's not a huge disparity over four games, but it's enough to further bury an already behind-the-eight-ball offensive team like New York. 

That said, New York's defense has been statistically fine against Atlanta -- sixth among teams still alive in the postseason. But the old adage that defense wins championships is just that. Old. These days, you have to put the ball in the basket to be a real postseason threat. Ask the Miami Heat what it looks like when your best player doesn't score. When 32-year-old Derrick Rose is your bail-out bucket-getter, happy trails. 

The series isn't over. There's still time to reshape this narrative and make articles like this one look premature, if not outright foolish. But I wouldn't bet on it. You can pull up all the advanced stats you want, but in the end, there's a certain amount of shallowness to basketball. It doesn't have to be as deep as we sometimes make it. The Hawks have better players than the Knicks. They have more offensive options who can score in more ways. They have better shooters, better playmakers, more versatile defenders, a better big man. 

I've said this before and I'm going to say it again: Expectations are the root of frustration. If your expectations are in order, you can live with the results. But it's when you get overly amped on a team like the Knicks, and a player like Randle, that you set yourself up for disappointment.

It's tempting to do. The Knicks are a feel-good story and should remain one no matter how this series ends. The Garden was alive in Games 1 and 2. Randle was spectacular this season. What fun is being fan if you can't believe in the improbable? I get it. I'm a Northern California kid who wanted to believe this year's Warriors had a conference finals run in them. But deep down, I knew they didn't. Same goes for the Knicks. They're just not as good a team as most of us want them to be. For now, they're just way better than they used to be. 

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Stop watching bad TV picture settings: 9 ways to optimize your big screen - CNET

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The default color on many TVs is too blue, but a quick tweak can improve accuracy.

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You know that picture settings menu on your TV? It can make all the difference between a bad picture and getting the full potential out of your big screen. All those adjustments can seem intimidating at first, but a few easy tweaks are worth it, whether you're watching the latest streaming TV show, enjoying 4K HDR movies or playing video games. Colors can look more lifelike and accurate, brightness can be comfortable for viewing in daytime and at night, and motion can look more natural. Changing your picture mode is the first step, and only takes a few seconds, or you can go as deep as you like.

Read more: Apple TV can now automatically calibrate color. But does it actually work?

A word of warning before we begin: Picture setting names are all over the place. A setting one TV-maker calls "brightness" could control something totally different on another set, for example. We tackle a lot of the variations below, but we can't account for every TV-maker, especially on older models, so your mileage may vary.

Start with the right picture mode

The easiest way to get accurate color? Put your TV in Movie or Cinema mode.

Sarah Tew/CNET

Your TV's picture mode has the largest effect on overall picture quality. This one setting controls multiple other settings to change the overall "look" of your TV. If you've never changed this setting it's probably still the default mode, typically labeled Standard, Vivid, Dynamic, Bright or something similar. The TV is its least accurate in this mode, with typically blown-out colors and image "enhancing" features that might catch the eye on a shelf in a store, but at home might make the TV look worse than it could. 

A place to start is switching to the mode called Cinema, Movie, Calibrated or Filmmaker. These will dial back some of the picture's more garish aspects. At first, the TV might even look soft or too warm ("reddish"). We'll discuss below why that is, but for now trust that you're actually seeing more fine detail, and the image is more lifelike. 

Read more: What's the best picture mode?

Let's move on to some specific controls.

Backlight or OLED light

• Controls the light intensity of the entire display
• Too high and it can cause headaches or eye strain, waste energy and, in some cases, cause premature wear on the TV
• Too low and the image is too dim and difficult to see

Nearly all TVs will have some control that adjusts the overall light output of the TV. It's usually labeled as the backlight control, or OLED light, or something similar. On newer Sony TVs this setting is labeled Brightness, and on Roku TVs there are five settings (Brightest to Darkest) in addition to a backlight control. Whatever the label, this setting is the actual brightness, which is generally separate from the control labeled "Brightness" (see below). 

You should adjust this setting based on room lighting and personal preference. Brighter rooms and daylight viewing will call for a higher setting, while home theater or nighttime viewing often looks better at a lower setting. On an LCD TV, a bright backlight can wash out the image somewhat and reduce contrast and pop, especially on models that lack full array local dimming. 

The brighter the TV is, the more energy it will consume, if you're concerned about how much electricity you use. Higher brightness also makes OLED TVs somewhat more susceptible to image retention and burn-in -- although that's unlikely with typical viewing habits, even at maximum brightness. 

Read more: OLED screen burn-in: What you need to know in 2021

Contrast

On the left, what the image of some friendly beachside 'roos should look like. On the right, when the contrast control is set too high. Notice the lack of detail in the sand and how the clouds are blown out.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

• Controls the white or bright parts of an image
• Too high will erase detail from clouds, snow and other bright objects
• Too low will look dim and flat

The contrast control adjusts how bright the bright parts of the image are. There is an upper limit, however. If you set the control too high, it "clips" the whites, making near-white details totally white. This effectively erases any detail in bright objects like clouds without making the image actually brighter.

To set contrast by eye, you'll need something with a lot of bright areas of the image. Baseball works pretty well for this -- a fly ball, pop fly, home runs, something with shots of the sky -- or skiing (depending on season, clearly) or something with clouds. What you're looking for is a bright image, but still with highlight detail. In other words, the bright areas of the image still have detail, and aren't just awash in white. 

Once you've found something you think will work, turn the contrast control up until you start losing detail. Clouds will cease being clouds, snow will just be glare. Now turn the control back down till you see detail again. Somewhere in this range will be ideal. Since all content is a little different you might need to tweak it a bit as you watch other shows/movies.

Don't want to mess with all that? Just leave it at the default for the Movie or Cinema setting.

Brightness or Black level

On the left, what the teahouse should look like. On the right, when the brightness control is set too low. Notice how the shadows disappear completely.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

• Controls the black or dark parts of an image
• Too high will look flat and washed out
• Too low will erase detail in shadows and dark areas of the image

On most TVs, the brightness control doesn't actually control the TV's "brightness." Instead, it adjusts how dark the darkest parts of the image are. Like with contrast, there's a fine line between too high and too low. In this case, too high and the image will appear washed out. Too low and all shadows will disappear into black. (On newer Sony TVs, this control is labeled Black Level.)

A closeup from the image above. Notice how you can't see anything in the shadows in the image on the right.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

To set brightness, you're looking for the opposite type of content from contrast. Dark movies, like Aliens or The Dark Knight, are perfect for this. Some famously dark TV episodes might be too dark to use for this. 

Turn the Brightness control down until everything disappears into blackness (or something close). From there, turn it back up so you can see detail in everything, but the image doesn't look washed out. Another test for this is a darker scene with someone with long hair. The underside of their hair (I don't know what people with hair call it) away from the light can be a good place to spot shadow detail -- also dark coats at night. Again, you might need to try a few different shows or movies to get it right.

Sharpness

On the left, the original image of the walls of Tallinn. On the right, what it could look like if you set the sharpness control too high.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

• Controls artificial edge enhancement, not image sharpness
• Too high erases image detail, adds a halo to fine lines
• Depending on the TV, set to 0 there's no effect, or a slight softening

Believe it or not, the sharpness control doesn't really improve sharpness. In a way it improves apparent sharpness, but at the expense of actual fine detail and usually with additional noise. On nearly all TVs the sharpness control adds "edge enhancement," artificially accentuating any edges the TV finds in the image. The problem is, doing this hides the actual detail in the image, so the result looks more artificial with less actual detail.

A close-up of the example above. Note the extra noise and artificial "halo" around the spires on the right.

Geoffrey Morrison/CNET

So it may seem counterintuitive, but you should turn the sharpness control down, way down. Some TVs look best with the control at 0. Others look best within the first 10% or so of this control's range. If you're used to how your TV looks with the sharpness control way up, as it typically is in the Dynamic or Vivid modes, it might appear soft at first when you turn it down. Find some high-quality 4K content and you might be surprised how detailed it now looks. You should be able to find the sweet spot on your TV looking closely for textures in clothing, wrinkles in faces, hair and beards, that kind of thing.

Read more: Why you need to turn down your TV's sharpness control

Color and tint

• Controls color saturation and red-green shift
• A holdover from the analog TV days
• Generally will be correct, or close enough, out of the box

Generally, the color and tint controls will be reasonably close to correct out of the box, especially in Cinema or Movie mode. You can experiment with their effects, but it's rare they're off by more than one or two steps in either direction.

At the top, the color temperature is set too low, or warm. At the bottom, it's set too high, or cool.

Geoffrey Morrison

Color temperature or white balance

• Controls how warm or cool the image looks
• Too high and the image will be too blue
• Too low and the image will be too red

Color temperature is a difficult one. Your brain gets used to the color temp of your TV, so if you change it, it's going to seem "wrong." In fact, this is probably the first thing you'll notice if you switch to the Cinema or Movie mode. It's going to look too warm or "reddish." On most TVs, this is actually the most accurate and lifelike. Your TV has been lying to you for years! 

Switch to your TV's warm color temperature mode and watch it for a few days. If it still seems off to you, try the standard mode. I promise the cool mode will look far too blue once you get used to warm.

Check out my article on color temp and why it matters for more info.

Motion interpolation or smoothing (the soap opera effect)

David Katzmaier/CNET

• Controls how "smooth" motion is by artificially creating new frames of video
• Too high, or even enabled at all, it can be annoying to some
• Too low and the TV might appear soft with motion, such as sports

As TV settings go, motion interpolation is a rather controversial topic. Many people, including film purists and pretty much everyone who works in Hollywood, hate it. It makes movies look like a cheap soap opera or a video you'd shoot on your phone. If you've ever looked at a new TV and just felt something was off, or the image just didn't look real, it's probably this. Some people like it, but a lot of people don't. Your new TV almost certainly has this feature turned on in non-Cinema or Movie modes. Turning it off might change how you feel about your purchase.

Read more: Soap opera effect: Tom Cruise wants you to turn it off. Here's how

Game mode

• Reduces input lag, or how long it takes for your input to register onscreen
• Usually disables features that might make the image better
• Useful for any game that requires timing or aiming, especially online multiplayer

Input lag is how long it takes for you to press a button on a game controller and then to have an onscreen effect in the game. For many people this delay, measured in milliseconds, isn't noticeable. For others, especially with certain types of games, it can make a massive difference. From jumping puzzles to pixel-perfect aim in a first-person shooter, getting the timing right in many games is crucial. 

Minimizing input lag, usually via a feature called game mode, can make a significant difference. If you've bought a new TV and suddenly your scores and rankings have dropped, this might be why. It's not something you want to leave enabled all the time, since it usually disables processing features that can improve the TV's picture quality.

Some TVs and consoles now support switching to this mode automatically.

Further steps

As mentioned above, the next step to fine-tuning your TV to perfection is getting a setup disc. The Spears & Munsil disc is a great option because it gets you right to the patterns without any extraneous fluff. If you just want someone else to do it, ideally with specialized test equipment, see if there are any TV calibrators in your area.

Lastly, make sure any sources you have, like a streaming stick or a cable or satellite box, are set to your TV's resolution (4K for 4K TVs, etc). Generally speaking they should do this automatically, but it's worth digging into the settings to be sure. Your 4K TV won't look its best without 4K content. You might need to pay for a higher tier to get that, depending on the service. 

Lastly, HDMI. Chances are whatever HDMI cables you have are fine. If you try to send 4K from a media streamer and it doesn't work, it's possible your HDMI cables can't handle the additional resolution. Fortunately, new HDMI cables are cheap. If your TV is getting the resolution you want from your sources, new HDMI cables won't make the image look or sound better, so you can save your money. 

Now playing: Watch this: Calibrate your TV by eye

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As well as covering TV and other display tech, Geoff does photo tours of cool museums and locations around the world, including nuclear submarines, massive aircraft carriers, medieval castles, airplane graveyards and more. 

You can follow his exploits on Instagram and YouTube, and on his travel blog, BaldNomad. He also wrote a bestselling sci-fi novel about city-size submarines, along with a sequel. 

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