If the new high-definition TV you brought home over the holidays isn’t wowing you with its glorious picture quality, don’t give up hope. It might just need a little tweaking and fine-tuning to get it into tiptop shape.

For starters, when you first power up, you’ll be presented with a choice of “home” or “store/display” modes. Choose “home,” which will yield better picture quality in most residential lighting. The store mode is generally super-pumped-up to make the screens stand out under fluorescent lighting.

You can usually improve the picture with a few more button pushes. Press the menu button on the remote to access the video or picture menu. Scroll through the list and try out the Pro, Cinema, or Standard mode (names vary by brand). As you switch modes, settings for brightness, color, sharpness, and other attributes will change. See which you prefer. One might suit you perfectly.

You can also adjust the various settings individually by choosing the Custom or User mode. Adjust brightness and contrast first, then color. Ideally, detail in both dark and bright areas should be visible, and colors (especially skin tones) should look natural. A handy way to do this is to play a DVD or DVR recording and freeze on an image with people and a mix of dark and light areas.

It’s generally good to set attributes to a middle or neutral position, then adjust up or down until the image looks realistic. Although sharpness sounds like a plus, keep it at a bare minimum so details don’t look harsh and overly enhanced. The same holds true for brightness and color. In most cases, high settings look unnatural.

I was recently reminded of just how important picture settings are when I switched video inputs on my TV. (I switched the cable box from HDMI to component-video so I could use the HDMI input for a Blu-ray player.) Suddenly, the TV picture looked atrocious—harsh, glaring, unnaturally sharp. It turned out that the set remembers the settings for each input. That’s a nice feature in general, because it lets you optimize the picture for each source, say, your cable box on one and your disc player on the other. A few changes to the picture settings and I was back in business.

Of course, you need good-quality content to get optimal picture quality. A Blu-ray disc is the best quality you can get at home, but some HD TV programming is very good as well. And make sure you’re using either the HDMI or component-video input to get high-def from a cable, satellite, or phone company box. With off-air HD from an antenna, you can use the coaxial input.

If you held off shopping for a new set until after the holiday dust settled, be sure to check our latest LCD and plasma TV Ratings (available to subscribers) to see which sets deliver the goods.

So don’t settle for less than the best your TV has to offer. It’s all in your hands.

—Eileen McCooey

Combing through hundreds of blog posts and news articles daily, Dirk Klingner, our technology-trend watcher, sifts through the noise to bring you the tech news most important to consumers. If you have a tip on a story you want to share, leave a comment below.

AT&T Tells FCC it’s time to cut the cord (Network World)

…AT&T said in its response to the FCC that “with each passing day, more and more communications services migrate to broadband and IP-based services, leaving the public switched telephone network (”PSTN”) and plain-old telephone service (”POTS”) as relics of a by-gone era.”

Get every National Geographic since 1888 on a 160GB hard drive (DownloadSquad)

…120 years of amazing discoveries, eye-opening editorial and mind-expanding stories form The Complete National Geographic. Maps, stories and every single damn photo, all lovingly reproduced in ’stunning high resolution’… and distributed on a hard drive!

The One Week Digital Cleanse (one forty plus)

Musician John Mayer is calling on his fans/readers to join him in a One Week Digital Cleanse to “defragment my mental and psychological hard drive.” John recommends emailing only from computers and avoiding social networking sites among other actions.

The Data-Crunching Powerhouse Behind ‘Avatar’ (Data Center Knowledge)

…Thirty four racks comprise the computing core, made of 32 machines each with 40,000 processors and 104 terabytes of memory.

Facebook fugitive taunts British police (MSNBC)

…Craig “Lazie” Lynch, 28, escaped from the minimum-security Hollesley Bay Prison near the village of Woodbridge in southern England three months ago. Since then, he’s been regularly updating his Facebook page with ungrammatical digs at police, as well as pictures showing him holding a “wanted” sign or making obscene gestures at the camera.

Did You Get A Magic Mouse This Holiday? Download MagicPrefs Immediately. (TechCrunch)

…MagicPrefs, which is made by developer Vlad Alexa, is a free piece of software that runs in the background once you start it up. It gives you a boatload of new multi-touch options for your Magic Mouse, broken into three main categories: Clicks & Taps, Swipes, and Drag, Pinch, etc.

Lighter side: “I’m on a Mac” video parody (Switch to Mac)

The stalemate between Fox and Time Warner Cable continues, so TWC subscribers might want to have a backup plan in case they lose their bowl games, other sports coverage, and programming such as House, the Simpsons, and more.

A trusty over-the-air antenna could be your salvation. If you have an HDTV (not an HD-ready set from years back), it contains a digital tuner, so you can watch broadcast programming. You'll need an antenna that can pick up both UHF and VHF signals.

If you still have a roof antenna, try plugging that into your TV's coaxial (antenna/cable input, sometimes labeled VHF). It might do the trick. Otherwise, take a run to Radio Shack, Best Buy, Walmart, or Target and buy an indoor antenna—preferably one you can return if it doesn't work for you. Most UHF/VHF models have two arms and a circular piece.

You'll probably have to tinker with the position and move it around–higher and closer to a window is usually good. Check out our coverage of the DTV transition for more specifics, and see our advice on using antennas.

If you're lucky enough to have a clear path from your antenna to the station transmitting Fox, you should be able to receive an HD broadcast, which might even be better quality than what you get from Time Warner.

City dwellers are less likely to have any luck with an antenna because of the tall buildings. In that case, you'll have to find a friend willing to share screen time.

—Eileen McCooey