Why Was Got Season 8 Ep 3 So Much Brighter When Ibwatched It Again

The Long Night, the third episode of Game of Thrones 8th and concluding season, had the internet in an uproar, but not for the usual reasons. This fourth dimension effectually, the buzz has less to exercise with the spectacle of the episode's epic Battle of Winterfell than the fact that few could actually encounter whatever spectacle on their screens at all.

Did HBO brand a poor creative telephone call by filming the episode in extremely low low-cal? Was the show overly compressed to fit downwardly clogged-up internet pipelines during height-apply hours? Or is there something going on with your TV or the room you lot are watching information technology in?

Information technology's a niggling chip of all three.

Pinch artifacts

Whether you watch HBO through your cablevision/satellite box, stream Game of Thrones through HBO'south streaming apps HBO Become or HBO Now, or stream HBO through a Hulu, Sling Television receiver, or Apple tree Telly subscription, the video signal you get is highly compressed. Video compression has been employed by cablevision and satellite operators for decades now — there are simply too many channels to try to cram through a very express space, and the hefty bandwidth needs of high-definition video compound that problem. The aforementioned effect exists for video streamed over the internet, with loftier-resolution 4K video increasingly taxing internet pathways.

To get y'all the TV you want to watch, pinch is applied to video and so it uses less data and is easier to deliver reliably. In many means, this procedure is similar to the compression of music and thus has a similar event. Information is actually removed from a digital music file, ideally in a manner that has the lowest possible impact. With music, you may hear raspiness in the treble — the higher frequency sounds made by brass instruments and cymbals — as a effect of this missing data. With video compression, these artifacts bear witness up as pixelation or as an consequence known in Television set circles every bit macroblocking.

Macroblocking looks a lot similar the word sounds. In scenes where there are large areas of 1 color, y'all may notice large squares — or blocks — of slightly unlike shades. Clouds, for example, may look less like puffy white and gray pillows and more like something out of a Lego movie. Then at that place is an effect called banding, which comes into play where in that location is a high contrast between a brilliant area in one office of the screen and a much darker one in another, with subtle shades in between. Rather than announced every bit a smoothen transition, you will see bands of different colors. The Idiot box shows yous lookout man all exhibit some level of macroblocking and banding — it'south always been there — it's just that these effects are more noticeable in dark scenes with a lot of dark grays and black patches on the screen interrupted periodically past, say, flames spewing from a dragon'due south mouth. And in the case of this GoT episode, which took place entirely at night, there was a lot of darkness going on.

Some may also have noticed that when the action in the episode was particularly fierce and fast, it began to get blurry. This also traces dorsum to compression. Fast-moving scenes require huge amounts of data, and when that data is removed, you miss information technology. Objects may appear blurry or blocky, almost as if there was a indicate dropout. The problem is there isn't plenty data getting through — be information technology due to compression, throttled bitrate, or a slow internet connection — and you become messy images as a upshot.

HBO's cinematic vision

HBO, understandably, approaches its virtually-watched prove with the type of creative vision shared by the world's greatest movie directors. Cinematography and high-quality digital graphics are blended with the expertise of Hollywood'southward finest. That approach, plainly, extends to making the show look as "naturalistic as possible," according to Insider. Rather than add together lighting to the battle-by-dark scene, HBO shot with extremely high-finish cameras and with just enough light to requite the scene the feel the directors wanted. The Dark King casts a wintry fog for a reason: You aren't supposed to see what's coming until it is correct on top of you.

The problem is, not everyone's TV or viewing environment can back up this style of art.

Your Television and your room

Ask anyone who owns a traditional projector and they'll tell you the enemy of a high-quality picture is any low-cal not coming from the projector itself. Projectors and projection screens rely on the absence of light to create contrast on screen, so where there is light leaking into the room, it brightens upwards the screen and competes with the lite coming from the projector, which has limited power to transmit light and is doing then from a relatively long altitude.

Today's TVs can get and then vivid that, exterior of sunlight beaming straight onto the screen, it'south rare to run across them launder out. Bottom line: Yous don't have to watch Idiot box in a pitch-black room to enjoy a nice picture … about of the fourth dimension. If the image on the screen is extremely night, glare from surrounding light might brand the dark objects virtually indiscernible. Even so, nearly Television programming is produced in such a mode that we can all merely sit down down and sentry without missing much. With movies, where dark scenes are used much more liberally, it'southward a unlike story. But those night scenes usually pass by chop-chop. Such was not the case with this episode of Game of Thrones. The bear witness exposed in a glaring way a struggle many TVs suffer.

It'south a lilliputian-known fact to almost anybody other than Television receiver industry pros that TVs have a hard time reproducing low-luminance video content. When an object on a screen gets very dim, the Television set must employ but the right corporeality of voltage to go far show upwardly — too much and the object is likewise bright and blows out everything around information technology, too little and the object might not even be visible. And when the unabridged screen is dim, an LED/LCD TV is actively working non to plough black stuff gray past lighting it upwards also much. On a technical level, an LED/LCD TV is being asked to defy the laws of physics in a large mode. Widely dark content is less of a problem for OLED TVs considering the technology is naturally skilful at doing blackness levels, so it has an easier time lighting up just what it wants, but handling low levels of lite is however a challenge from an electrical perspective.

All of this is to say that, while at that place are some very advanced (and expensive) TVs out there designed to handle extremely dark Idiot box and motion picture scenes well, most of usa don't own them. I watched the episode in question on an LG C9 OLED by streaming HBO through a Hulu app on the TV and when the low, low bitrate wasn't showing its ugly face, it looked glorious. And the room wasn't totally dark, either. Well-nigh people only don't have such a nice Tv set, though, which begs the question: If HBO is making art, but most people literally can't see it, does information technology thing?

Alter your settings and try once again

If you lot're rocking a less-than-stellar Telly and want to run across the episode, there are a couple of compromises you can make.

You tin can brand some bones Television receiver settings adjustments, like irresolute the contrast or brightness of your TV, to help make this night episode more visible, but know that the motion picture will look gray and you may not meet as much particular as you like.

The best affair you can exercise is get your room as dark as possible. Sentry at night, turn off all the lights, draw the blinds, and showtime watching. If it looks good plenty, excellent. If non, select Moving-picture show, Picture palace, or Calibrated as a film way preset, and so bump up the backlight setting on your LED/LCD simply until things await good enough.

Finally, effort to find a high-quality stream. HBO Become and HBO Now tend to stream at lower bit rates than HBO delivered through Hulu, Amazon Prime, or Sling TV (if HBO ever makes a return to Sling). Simply for this one episode, it may exist worth going the extra mile to scout through a better streaming service.