How to change your TV settings for a last night's Game of Thrones cover

For many viewers who listen to Game of thrones Last night, what was supposed to be one of the most remarkable and memorable scenes in the series was marred by darkness. The Battle of Winterfell, which unfolded in the episode of season 8 "The Long Night", lasted for 55 difficult nights to shoot and was the largest battle sequence of The Thrones l & # 39; history. It was supposed to be an end of season flex with epic proportions.

However, Miguel Sapochnik's close-up choices and the nocturnal setting of the battle were a perfect combination to reveal the weaknesses of the streaming world in which we live. Many fans went on Twitter to complain about the constant pixelation and extreme difficulty related to what was happening on the screen. A dozen variations on "who died on Game of thrones? "Have surfaced as the main Internet searches of last night and this morning, while viewers were trying to make sense of the action muddy visually. Jokes and memes abounded.

Why does it look so bad? Well, it's obvious that dark things are hard to see, but the main problem added here is compression. By the time Game of thrones reached your TV or mobile device every Sunday night, it has been completely compressed – by both HBO and your cable / satellite / streaming provider of your choice. This is a necessity to make the show accessible to a wide range of people with different Internet connection speeds. Compression is also applied on the fly for all those who grant cable, where the disadvantages can be more serious and perceptible:

Here are some ways you can try to solve the problem:

• Find the best quality stream

Video bandwidth is paramount when you're looking for the best streaming or download of a TV show. You want the show to be delivered on your device with the best possible quality. No cable or decoder can fix a noisy, pixelated video stream if it's the source content it has received from the beginning.

I have seen reports that Amazon, which sells the HBO service at $ 15 a month via Prime Video, is tending to broadcast Game of thrones at around 10 Mbit / s, while HBO Now and HBO Go broadcast at a speed close to 5 Mbit / s. This difference may seem small, but it is significant. The Amazon version of Game of thrones is less likely to show annoying pixelation or macro-blocking. I asked both companies about their Game of thrones presentation. But there is a consensus among the string cutting nerds on Reddit that Amazon is leading the way right now.

Image: HBO

Apple has also promised an unmatched video presentation for its upcoming Apple TV channels, which will include HBO. Unfortunately, these should not be available until May, when the company will have missed several Game of thrones episodes – maybe all the rest of the season.

In general, HBO is way behind Netflix in terms of presentation. One of these companies broadcasts many 4K HDR programs and the other is struggling to give a satisfactory 1080p video stream on your home TV.

For most programs, the problems are not as bad. But with Game of thrones To run a sequence as dimly lit during such a large percentage of the episode, it was hard to ignore the obvious compression and poor quality that hit the Battle of Winterfell.

• Check the brightness settings of your TV

The default picture mode of many TVs shipped today is often too bright and too hard for the eyes. Your natural inclination might be to lower the brightness so that the dark ones are darker and less gray. But this will only make things harder to discern, as you will lose detail in the shadows as you dim the brightness. If your TV has a cinema, cinema or calibrated mode, this is probably the best option for Game of thronesbecause it should limit the brightness while preserving the elements difficult to distinguish on the screen.

• Increase the backlight level

Maybe you care more about what's happening than the realism of a dark evening battle. In this case, you need to adjust the backlight of your LCD TV to a higher level to display anything that is difficult to understand. You can always lower it for scenes with normal lighting.

You rarely see long scenes as dark as the Battle of Winterfell, but when you do, do not stop. Turn off nearby lights or other sources of light that may cause flat glare or glare on your TV screen. It is likely that you are already doing this ritual on Sunday evenings, but if you do not, try your luck for you to see this week's episode again.

OLED TVs from LG and Sony can get perfect blacks, as each pixel is automatically lit. LCD TVs have a backlight that illuminates larger parts of the panel, which can make the dark scenes a bit hazy and too gray.

That said, if OLEDs excel at the level and contrast of black, they sometimes tend to crush details in dark scenes like the huge Battle of Winterfell, especially if your TV has not been calibrated.

• There are many factors that affect all of this, and you can not control them all.

Does anyone at home use the Internet for games or streaming while you watch? Game of thrones? This will limit the amount of internet bandwidth that you can devote to the show. And do not forget that HBO is facing a serious shortage of resources during the live broadcast of the new episode of the week. Streaming episodes on HBO Now may look a lot better the next day as fewer people try to stream at the same time.

• Buy it later on Blu-ray if you need perfect visuals

When you buy Game of thrones On Blu-ray Discs, HBO can take advantage of all that storage space on each disc and simplify lossy video compression – without ripping or unpleasant artifacts. For some people, the animated scenes of "The Long Night" have become painful enough to give the impression of watching a GIF, but this is not a problem for the home media.

That said, Blu-ray is totally useless if you try to watch this last season of Game of thrones as it is broadcast week after week.

I would like to think that HBO is testing streaming on a range of TVs – in the same way that music engineers often walk in old cars to make sure their audio mastery holds in different environments. If there is not a wall filled with 500 dollar Roku TVs mixed with expensive OLEDs somewhere at HBO headquarters, the turmoil of last night may justify it.

And I hope that the coming war for the iron throne will take place in broad daylight.