Some of you may know this already, but for those who don't, if you happen to have your PC hooked up to your living room or bedroom TV, make sure you're aware of these two points and common options you can toggle:

- Chroma Subsampling / HDMI UHD Color TV option

- Input Lag / Game Mode TV option

- Limited RGB range / Full RGB Graphics Driver option (thanks to clarry for this one)

While I've had my TV on Game Mode for a while know, I have to admit I was unknowingly stuck with chroma subsampling until, well, yesterday... and I always thought my TV was just not sharp enough to display things any better, unlike my other system which is hooked up to a regular monitor and looks crisp as hell.

Turns out it is pretty darn fine, I just had to toggle an option I never even knew existed.

Thanks for the tips.

Sadly I don't think my parents would let me play games on the TV

Have to check that when I return home.

Thanks I have to check that chroma subsampling thing, if only I figure out what option, if any, is related to it. I recall in the past seeing that "smudged text" but it could have been with my earlier TV.

I recall that input lag being an issue before with my earlier TV, but back then I figured it out myself that it must be all the "picture enhancement postprocessing" that is causing the extra delay, and sure enough, when I went ahead to disable any "picture enhancement" I could find, the lag went away.

Third thing to watch for is that there is no overscan enabled, ie. edges of the picture are outside the TV borders. However it is quite easy to detect if you just see e.g. your Windows desktop on the TV and part of the icons or bars or text seems to be outside the borders. I have no idea why overscan still exists in modern TVs, I thought it was needed only for old CRT TVs? I mean, who wouldn't want to see the whole picture (be it a movie or a Windows desktop) on their modern flatscreen TV?

Sometimes graphics cards also default to sending limited range RGB if you're using HDMI. Switch it to full range and enjoy the image the way it's supposed to be.

https://www.howtogeek.com/285277/how-to-avoid-washed-out-colors-when-using-hdmi-on-your-pc/

I've only seen windows drivers do that, Linux always gave me full range by default.

That's pretty much what "Game Mode" does in the background in most cases - it disables/grays out any processing features that might negatively impact input lag. I haven't seen overscan being an issue with modern digital standards, unless you somehow messed with the TV settings, but it was certainly possible with VGA monitors/TVs. Very good point that I forgot to mention. I'll edit my initial post to include it. I hadn't considered it because I am mostly, in fact, using Linux and as you rightly said, it's usually not a problem.

Ah, to be a child again.