The Joy of Factory Settings

Growing weary of adjusting the picture every time I changed channels on my 32" Sony LCD HD TV, I thought I'd try hitting "Reset" on the menu. Although I will sometimes get faces with Oompa Loompaitis, the results are generally good. Instead of trying to adjust everything, the factory setting brings me back to square one and I may only have to dial down the color or boost the brightness to get more shadow detail.

Another factor may be personal taste as compared with what a Japanese technician may surmise to be my concept of a perfect picture. (I'm a Sony fan.)

Some of the high-end remotes are programmable with sub-routines or macros that can be customized for multiple channels. Sony makes one in the $200 range.

As a footnote, I am aware that there is such a thing as Hi-Def makeup which somehow softens the faces of talent who don't want you to see all of their imperfections in unforgiving HD. I guess this is why you can have two talking heads in the same shot and one will look slightly out-of-focus. Any makeup experts? Wolfgang Puck may have been given the treatment on his live HSN pots-and-pans spiel this morning. (Again, I'm a Wolfgang fan...and whatever became of Art Krull who once had a very entertaining cookware pitch on HSN?)