Recently, I found myself in the market for a new television, but as someone who's not necessarily a television enthusiast, my focus was on features like overall brightness, how vibrant the image looked, and whether the blacks were deep enough.

For the most part, I just wanted a television that would make my PS5 games shine. So when I got myself a brand-new LG OLED television, I was a little taken aback to see a lot of buzzwords like HDMI 2.1, 4K at 120Hz, low latency modes, and even game optimizers. All of it sounded like the usual spec sheet buzzwords brands use to make a TV feel more upmarket.

I can just connect my PS5 to the TV via HDMI, and the game should just work, and everything should look great. Or at least that was my assumption: if the console is turned on and the TV shows a picture, everything is working as it should. That's not entirely true. I started noticing a hint of latency, and the colors didn't quite look true to life as they should on a modern, current-gen console. Not enough to be a huge problem, but certainly not what I'd paid for.

In my search to troubleshoot this, I found the answer, and it ended up being embarrassingly simple: my PS5 was plugged into the wrong HDMI port.

One of these ports is not like the other

HDMI 2.1 support depends on the port, not just the TV

Coming from a rather ancient TV, I was under the assumption that all HDMI ports are the same. Just plug the cable in, and the experience should be exactly the same across the board, but that's not how modern TVs work.

However, you see, the PlayStation 5 supports HDMI 2.1, which enables features such as 4K at 120 Hz, variable refresh rate, and auto low latency mode. These features depend not only on the television model you're using but also on the specific HDMI input you're using. On many televisions, if not most, only one or two of those ports actually support the full HDMI 2.1 configuration.

The rest are standard inputs that work just fine for regular media, but they do not unlock all the features that your PS5 is capable of. When I initially set up the television and my PS5, I ended up connecting it to the regular port, which doesn't support all these features. And all it took to give the picture quality from my PlayStation 5 a dramatic boost was switching the HDMI port.

Well, that wasn't all. There were a few settings I had to change in the HDMI menu, but the biggest change I made was switching the HDMI port.

One of the first improvements I noticed was that gaming in shooting games felt just a bit tighter. That's where the Auto Low Latency Mode kicks in. ALLM is a feature of modern televisions that lets your TV switch into a proper gaming-optimized mode instead of a cinema-focused preset, which is built for movies.

In cinema-focused presets, TVs often apply extra processing, such as motion smoothing, artificial sharpness, and image cleanup. Now, while they might be great for picture quality when watching movies, they also add a delay to the game. Using an ALLM mode as part of the TV's game mode removes most of that post-processing, so that the delay between input and your character reacting on screen reduces dramatically.

Switching to the right HDMI port unlocks the PS5's real gaming features

VRR might be the biggest upgrade to console gaming

To be appropriate, HDMI mode also unlocked 120Hz capabilities of the console. Now, to be sure, most PS5 games don't support 120fps output, but the few games that do certainly make it obvious. Fast movement appears a bit clearer, which is very useful if you play shooters or even racing games. I'm not a competitive gamer, but I can finally see what PC gamers keep talking about. Timing just feels tighter, and I can see this making a big difference when playing online.

The same improvements apply to things like variable refresh rate. VRR helps the TV stay in sync with the game's frame output in real time, so that instead of visible tearing or uneven motion, when the performance drops in high-intensity scenes, gameplay just feels steadier and less distracting. Of all the improvements to the experience, I'd say VRR made the most difference.

The biggest PS5 upgrade might just be using the right HDMI port

I would be overselling the upgrade if I said that the PlayStation 5 looked absolutely terrible before I switched over to the HDMI input. That's obviously not the case, but these little upgrades are what take a current-gen experience and absolutely elevate it. Between lower latency, smoother motion, better responsiveness, and fewer small frustrations that make games feel not quite as next-gen as they should, I'm finally getting the experience that the PlayStation 5 promises.

You'd be surprised at just how many people haven't set up their PS5 and brand-new television correctly. Anytime somebody asks me about the optimal settings for their PS5, I no longer start by asking about HDR settings or display resolution; instead, I check whether they're using the right HDMI port. It's one of the simplest and most inexpensive fixes you can make. In fact, you just need to use the HDMI cable included with the PS5, and with the right television, it can be the biggest upgrade to your console gaming experience.