While TV manufacturers love to plaster the 4K banner all over their advertisements, HDR (High Dynamic Range) is arguably a more exciting development in picture quality, creating detailed shadows, punchy highlights, and vivid colors. Like the PlayStation 4 Pro, Sony’s latest PlayStation 5 supports gaming in HDR for a picture that really pops—provided you set it up correctly.
Unfortunately, HDR can be finicky. Sometimes it appears to work fine, but you run into audio problems when it’s enabled, or see digital “snow” in the picture. Other times, your PS5 may revert to a standard picture even when connected to an HDR TV. Here are a few things you can try to get everything working properly.
Check Your Connections
The PlayStation 5 will attempt to enable HDR automatically if it detects that your TV supports it. However, that depends on everything being hooked up correctly in the first place.
First, use the HDMI cable that came with your console. Older, “Standard” HDMI cables may be enough for watching SDR movies at 1080p, but when you bump up to 4K HDR games at higher framerates, you need more bandwidth. If you ever lose your PS5 cable (or need an extra), make sure you buy one labeled “Ultra High Speed” or “48Gbps”—I’m currently using inexpensive ones from Cable Matters with good results.
In addition, make sure your PS5 is connected to the right ports on your TV, receiver, and/or soundbar. If you’re plugging it directly into your TV, check your TV’s manual to make sure you’re connected to a port that can handle 4K HDR at 60Hz (some TVs only allow it on one or two ports). Any port labeled “HDMI 2.1” will offer some extra gaming features, so you’ll want to use that option.
If you’re using a receiver or soundbar, make sure they’re capable of passing a 4K, HDR, 120Hz signal. If it isn’t, you may need to connect the PS5 directly to the TV and run audio from the TV to your receiver or soundbar using HDMI ARC or an Optical cable.
Tweak Your TV Settings
Next, you’ll want to double-check your TV’s picture settings, as they may not be ready for the PS5’s capabilities out of the box. In particular, many HDR TVs have a setting called “HDMI Deep Color,” “HDMI Enhanced,” or something similar, that you may need to turn on for HDR to work properly.
You’ll often find this in your TV’s Input Settings, but check your TV’s manual to see where exactly it is on your model. (Check your receiver, too—my Pioneer receiver required a weird, hidden combination of button presses to turn the feature on.)
Other TVs may have different settings that need to be tweaked—some owners of TCL TVs, for example, found they needed to set the PS4 Pro’s input to HDMI 2.0 Mode for things to work properly, and the PS5 may have similar quirks on some TV models.
I would also recommend—though this is completely optional—putting your TV in the Movie, Cinema, or Calibrated picture mode for best results. You may have to do this after starting an HDR game, as some TVs use different presets for SDR and HDR modes.
The Standard and Vivid modes that come with most TVs don’t use accurate colors, and thus won’t look as true-to-life in your games. Cinema mode may not look as punchy in comparison, but it’s actually the most accurate setting out of the box. Just give yourself time to get used to how it looks.
You probably don’t even want to adjust the settings within Cinema mode, since the default Contrast and Backlight settings are usually set optimally for HDR in this mode. Be sure to turn on things like Local Dimming for those deep blacks, though, and Game Mode to reduce input lag. You also want to enable HGIG Mode, if your TV has it, to achieve the best possible HDR image.
Adjust Your PlayStation 5 Settings
If all of the above things are set properly, your PS5 should output HDR, and your TV will let you know by showing an HDR logo in the corner when you start it up (or when you hit the Info button on your remote). If you run into issues, though, there are a few settings on the PS5 you can change.
Head to Settings > Screen and Video on your PS5 and look at the options under the Video Output tab. Set to Automatic, most of these should work, but if not, try bumping the Resolution or 4K Video Transfer Rate settings down a notch. If that solves the problem, your TV, receiver, or cable may not be capable of the bandwidth required by the PS5 for those settings.
(Note: if changing these settings results in a black screen, turn your PS5 off and boot it into Safe Mode by holding the power button down for two beeps. You can then reset the resolution to bring the picture back.)
If you want to check whether the PS5 is outputting HDR correctly, many TV remotes have an Info button that will bring up a bar along the top of the screen showing the current resolution, framerate, and whether you’re getting an SDR or HDR signal. This can vary from TV to TV (my Vizio TV doesn’t show framerate, but my Samsung does), though most should have something in this realm.
Run the PS5’s HDR Calibration
Finally, your PS5 will need to be calibrated for HDR. This is important, because not every TV can reproduce those bright highlights and deep blacks with the same intensity, so your PS5 needs to know what your TV is capable of—how bright it can get and how dark it can get—in order to produce the best-looking image.
The PS5 will likely run this tool when you first set it up, but if you’ve tweaked any of the above settings, it’s probably a good idea to run it again and calibrate to your TV’s current settings. Head to Settings > Screen and Video and select Adjust HDR. Follow the instructions on screen—scroll through the levels until the image disappears, then knock it back one notch—you want it to be as barely visible as possible for ideal results.
In theory, this setting should apply system-wide, but some PS4 Pro games had their own calibration tools built-in. So if your game has its own calibration wizard, be sure to run that as well and follow the instructions closely, especially if you ever change your TV’s settings.
