Wait, are the new DIRECTV menus grey or black?

If you’re trying to calibrate that new 4K Television, don’t use the new DIRECTV menus. They may look black, but the darkest portions are still dark grey. That means if you adjust the brightness and backlight on your TV so the dark parts disappear, your picture will be far too dark overall.

The grey-on-grey-on-grey tone of the new menus has some folks feeling like it’s a little too blah, a little too hard to read, and a little too… grey. I completely understand where people are coming from, but I’ll say that the new menus share their greyness with similar menus from Comcast and Spectrum, so there has to be some reason these companies are doing all of this. It can’t just be personal preference on the part of the designers, right?

If you are looking to properly calibrate a monitor, you’ll find a variety of discs, tools and downloads that can help you, but don’t get too hung up on how other people think that your television should look. Remember, it’s your TV and you should be able to use it the way you want to!

About the Author

Stuart Sweet
Stuart Sweet is the editor-in-chief of The Solid Signal Blog and a "master plumber" at Signal Group, LLC. He is the author of over 10,000 articles and longform tutorials including many posted here. Reach him by clicking on "Contact the Editor" at the bottom of this page.