Modern 4K UHD Blu-ray players are jam-packed with audiovisual tools, but not all AV technologies are created equal. In fact, some of the features that come standard with disc players might be doing more harm than good to your movie and TV show viewing experience.
Here are three AV features in particular that, although useful in some contexts, end up being detrimental in many instances. Personally, I always disable these specific settings whenever I set up a new 4K UHD player, regardless of brand or price tag.
Turn off Dynamic Range Control (DRC)
Block audio compression from taking hold
Dynamic Range Control, or DRC for short, is a technology that aims to intelligently boost quiet sounds and to lower higher sounds so as to normalize overall audio output. The problem is that in some cases, DRC compresses audio quality while muffling loud action scenes in the process. If you have a modern sound system connected to your television set, then there’s little need to rely on DRC’s software processing. By eliminating this middleman altogether, your soundscape should feel more accurate to the source material in question.
Turn off noise reduction
Prevent the loss of fine details
Noise reduction and sharpness controls are commonplace on 4K UHD Blu-ray players, and while they can sometimes help in improving picture quality, they are often simply unnecessary. Artifical image processing techniques can crush finer details, which is far from ideal when playing back content on the 4K UHD disc format. Plus, many TVs have built-in noise reduction algorithms that work better on the whole. As a hard and fast rule, I disable sharpening features to avoid over-processed images.
Turn off internet access
Stop telemetry in its tracks
Just about every mainstream 4K UHD disc player on the market comes with built-in W-Fi connectivity for access to streaming services and the like. The problem is that, when connected to the internet, players tend to ‘phone home’ with telemetric data, while sometimes also building an advertising profile based on your content consumption habits. I find that the native online functionalities found on most players are subpar to begin with, which is why I always shut off Wi-Fi and instead rely on a dedicated streaming set-top box like the Apple TV for watching internet-based shows and movies.
