Ahead of the release of "Stranger Things 5," which dropped on Netflix at 8 p.m. EST on Wednesday, series creator Ross Duffer posted a PSA on Instagram, walking viewers through their television settings to ensure that everything is set up for a proper viewing experience.
With the camera facing his TV, Duffer narrates, "A little PSA before you watch tonight. I want to make sure that your TVs are set up properly." While acknowledging that different TVs will have different displays, he navigates viewers to settings, then picture mode settings and then expert controls before encouraging people to turn all of the expert controls off. On Duffer's TV, this included dynamic contrast, super resolution, edge enhancer and color filter, all of which he deemed "garbage."
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Duffer then goes back to picture options, where he shows that noise reduction should be turned off, as well as, "the worst offender of all, truemotion or smoothmotion," which creates "the dreaded soap opera effect."
Duffer continues that on most TVs, enabling the expert vision— in his case, Dolby Vision-Movie Dark mode— will resolve most of the issues, but not all of them. He thus encourages viewers to double check, and warns that "whatever you do, do not switch anything on 'vivid' because it's gonna turn on all the worst offenders. It's gonna destroy the color and it's not the filmmaker's intent."
Duffer would understand that intent, as he and his brother Matt directed three of "Stranger Things 5: Volume 1's" four episodes. The one outlier, Episode 3, was directed by Frank Darabont. Volume 2 will release the next three episodes of "Stranger Things 5" on Christmas Day and then the finale will release in theaters and on Netflix on New Year's Eve.
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