HDR, which is the acronym for High Dynamic Range, has been the big thing in TV for a while now, with all manufacturers producing TVs with HDR capabilities and all streaming services serving HDR-compatible content to allow consumers to benefit from the considerable positive effect it brings to the picture quality.
That being said, in some cases, it may become necessary to disable (or re-enable) the HDR setting, with the process of doing so potentially becoming a chore due to not being able to locate the setting, especially in the case of a TCL Roku TV, where the setting is actually hidden.
Fortunately, the process of locating the HDR setting on your TCL TV is not as challenging as it sounds at first, as accessing the secret menu where the HDR setting is hidden is as simple as inputting a simple combination of buttons.
To access the secret menu of your TCL TV, you will need to press the buttons on the remote in the following order: Home (5 times), Rewind, Down, Fast Forward, Down, Rewind.
Once you see the secret menu on the screen, you will need to navigate to the Change HDR Mode section, where you can enable or disable HDR.
Moving on, we will go through the process of enabling or disabling HDR through the secret menu of your TCL TV in more detail, discuss whether HDR is a feature you should activate or not, and troubleshoot the particular scenario of HDR not working correctly on a TCL TV.
How to Access TCL Secret Menu to Enable (or Disable) HDR?
Technically speaking, we can consider toggling HDR to be a pretty straightforward process, with most monitors and TVs allowing you to perform this action through the standard configuration section.
On the other hand, in the case of the TCL Roku TVs, the HDR setting is hidden in a secret menu instead, which requires a specific combination to access.
As a result, the first order of business is to access the secret menu of your TCL TV, where you will be able to find the section that allows you to modify the status of HDR.
Below, you can find a step-by-step guide that will allow you to access the secret menu of your TCL Roku TV:
- Press the Home button on the remote five times.
- Press the Rewind button on the remote.
- Press the Down button on the remote.
- Press the Fast Forward button on the remote.
- Press the Down button on the remote.
- Press the Rewind button on the remote.
When you successfully enter the combination we mentioned above, the secret menu should show up, which you can easily recognize by the “TV Secret Screen” label on the top of the screen.
Once the secret menu is visible on the screen, you will need to navigate to the Change HDR Mode option, which will present you with the “Disable HDR”, “Open HDR”, and “Dolby Vision” options, where you can choose the one that is suitable to change the status of HDR.
When done with the modification, you can choose the Cancel option at the bottom to exit the menu and return to the channel you have been watching.
As the secret menu contains some additional options that we can consider to be more technically advanced than the HDR toggle, we highly recommend against modifying any of the other settings in the menu unless you’re familiar with them.
Should You Enable or Disable HDR on Your TCL TV?
There is no denying that HDR is a technology that drastically alters the viewing experience, as it dynamically adjusts values such as the brightness and contrast of your TV to create the best picture possible based on the scene.
While HDR does indeed serve its purpose of increasing picture quality in the majority of cases, the fact that it can produce very bright or very dark images in particular scenarios can be highly displeasing to some.
As a rule of thumb, our recommendation would be to always leave HDR on to be able to enjoy the highest quality picture that your TV can produce, as HDR content will always create a better viewing experience than SDR content.
The only exceptions to this rule would be scenarios where your TV screen gets way too bright to the point where it’s displeasing to the eye or too dark to the point where you can’t tell what’s going on.
In such scenarios, disabling HDR and manually adjusting your TV’s brightness and contrast values will become necessary for an enjoyable viewing experience.
That being said, as it’s possible to enable or disable the HDR functionality of your TCL TV at any given time, you can feel free to utilize it for some content where you don’t face issues related to the brightness of the screen and disable it for others where it becomes a problem.
TCL TV HDR Doesn’t Work – What to Do?
As the impact of HDR on how a TV displays the image is quite considerable, you will most likely immediately notice the scenarios where it’s not working as intended.
If it looks like HDR is not working on your TCL TV, even though you have enabled it, the most likely scenario is that the content you’re watching is not HDR-compatible, which will force your TV to display SDR content instead, regardless of whether you have HDR on or off.
While there is no reliable way of finding out whether the content you’re watching is HDR-compatible, all popular streaming services, such as Amazon Video, Disney+, HBO Max, and Netflix (Premium), to name a few, serve HDR content.
It’s also worth mentioning that HDR content can come in different formats (such as HDR10, HDR10+, and Dolby Vision), and even though it’s rare (as HDR10 is the standard, content that comes in one of the other formats most likely also comes in HDR10), incompatibilities between the HDR format of the content and your TV can cause HDR not to work.
Conclusion
Even though the HDR setting being located in a secret menu is definitely far from necessary, toggling the status of HDR on your TCL TV is a relatively straightforward task that won’t take more than a minute of your time once you know what to do.
Below, you can find a summary of the steps that you will need to take to locate the section that allows you to change the status of HDR on your TCL TV, which involves accessing the secret menu:
- Access the secret menu by inputting the combination of Home (5x), Rewind, Down, Fast Forward, Down, and Rewind on the remote of your TCL TV.
- Choose the Change HDR Mode option from the secret menu.
- Choose the appropriate option between Disable HDR, Open HDR, and Dolby Vision.
- Choose the Cancel option from the secret menu to exit.
As modifications that you perform to the HDR setting will take effect immediately, without the need for any calibration process, feel free to experiment by quickly trying all the different options to find the one that’s creating the best viewing experience.
Mark’s first real encounter with tech was when he had to format his computer with Windows 98 around the age of 6 to quickly get back to playing Heroes of Might and Magic III without having to send the computer in for a repair, which he strangely found to be rather enjoyable since it was a new challenge for him at the time.
While he has always been particularly interested in the software side of things, which eventually led to him becoming a software developer, he enjoys keeping up with the advancements in consumer electronics and smart home technology when he’s not busy coding.