Ahead of the release of Stranger Things 5 on Netflix on Wednesday at 8pm EST, series creator Ross Duffer posted a PSA on Instagram walking viewers through their TV settings to make sure everything is set up for a proper viewing experience.
Duffer points the camera at the TV and narrates, “Before you watch tonight, I want to give you a little PSA. I want to make sure your TV is set up properly.” Recognizing that different TVs have different displays, he guides viewers through settings, then picture mode settings, then expert controls, and then recommends turning off all expert controls. On Duffer’s TVs, this included dynamic contrast, super resolution, edge enhancers, and color filters, all of which he considered “garbage.”
Duffer then goes back to the picture options and indicates that noise reduction should be turned off, as well as “the worst offender of all, True Motion or Smooth Motion,” which creates “horrible melodramatic effects.”
Duffer goes on to say that enabling Expert Vision (in his case Dolby Vision Movie Dark Mode) on most TVs solves most problems, but not all. So he urges viewers to double-check, warning: “Whatever you do, don’t turn on ‘Vivid,’ because you’ll be turning on all the worst offenders. It’ll destroy color, and that’s not the intention of the filmmakers.”
Duffer probably knows what he means, since he directed three of the four episodes of Stranger Things 5: Volume 1 with his brother Matt. The only outlier, episode 3, was directed by Frank Darabont. In Volume 2, the next three episodes of Stranger Things 5 will be released on Christmas Day, with the final episode in theaters and on Netflix on New Year’s Eve.
