Secret Roku trick instantly boosts your TV’s picture quality – but there’s another secret setting you must not use
ROKU devices have a load of less obvious settings that can take your TV experience to the next level.
Most people already know about picture modes which offer six types of viewing options.
These range from low power, standard and auto, to vivid, sports and movie.
But what if these still aren’t quite doing it?
Well, fortunately you can customise them yourself in a few simple clicks.
“Picture modes can be fine-tuned to achieve a more tailored image,” Roku says.
And there are eight specific settings to choose from – though there is one you’re not recommended to use, which we explain more about further down.
ROKU CUSTOMISABLE PICTURE SETTINGS
The options you should take a look at are:
- Backlight
- Brightness
- Contrast
- Sharpness
- Colour
- Tint
- Picture size
Some like brightness, sharpness and contrast may sound more obvious than others.
The backlight option lets you adjust the peak backlight level of your TV screen.
As for colour, this allows viewers to control how intense or vivid colours appear on the screen.
Tint is there for balancing the red to green colour, so you can get “satisfactory skin tones”.
The eight setting, Roku recommends most people don’t use.
This is the expert menu.
Expert settings goes into much deeper depth with things like micro contrast, gamma and colour space.
“Expert Picture Settings is designed for expert AV enthusiasts and professional TV calibrators who are comfortable with, and knowledgeable about, advanced picture quality concepts,” Roku warns.
If you do dabble too far – or even delve into the expert settings only to regret it – all is not lost.
There is a reset button available.
You can find all these settings by going to Picture Settings.
Roku voice commands – the official list
Here are some voice commands to try with your Roku mobile app, as revealed by the TV giant itself...
- Find a specific movie or show
“Harry Potter”
“find Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire”
“show me episodes of Silicon Valley” - Search for your favorite actors or directors
“Halle Berry”
“search for comedy movies with Will Farrell”
“find all Martin Scorsese films” - Browse popular genres
“show me comedies”
“find thriller movies” - Find content in a genre on a channel
“show documentary films on Sky Store”
- Launch a streaming channel
“go to YouTube”
“launch Prime Video”
“BBC iPlayer”
- Playback commands
“fast forward”
“rewind”
“pause”
“stop”
“resume”
“continue”
“skip”
“next”
“replay” - Closed captioning commands
“turn on closed captioning”
“hide the captions”
“show captions during replay”
“turn on captions during mute”
“what’s my captions setting?”
- Move forward a specific amount of time
“forward 15 minutes”
“skip 5 minutes”
“fast forward 3 minutes”
“go forward 10 minutes” - Move backward (or rewind) a specific amount of time
“go back half an hour”
“rewind 30 minutes” - Restart video from beginning
“start over”
- Search for content
“play Taylor Swift”
“play Daft Punk on Spotify”
“play S-Town on TuneIn” - Interact with your streaming service
“thumbs up/down”
“like/dislike”
“what song is this?”
- Switch devices
“switch the input to HDMI 3”
“switch to antenna TV”
“switch to Blu-ray player” - Change over-the-air broadcast channels
“channel up”
“channel down”
“tune to NBC”
“find channel 7.1″
“previous channel” - Launch or hide Live TV Channel Guide
“open live tv guide”
“open channel guide
“hide channel guide” - Adjust volume levels
“turn the volume up”
“volume down”
“mute”
“set volume to 50%”
“set volume to 5”