Last night time’s episode of “Game of Thrones” was a wild trip and inarguably one in all an epic present’s extra epic moments — should you may see it via the darkish and the blotchy video. It seems even one of the vital costly and meticulously produced reveals in historical past can fall prey to the scourge of low high quality streaming and unhealthy TV settings.
The excellent news is that this episode goes to look wonderful on Blu-ray or probably in future, higher streams and downloads. The unhealthy information is that hundreds of thousands of individuals already needed to see it in a manner its creators certainly lament. You need to know why this was the case. I’ll be simplifying a bit right here as a result of this subject is immensely complicated, however right here’s what you need to know.
(By the way in which, I can’t totally keep away from spoilers, however I’ll attempt to keep away from something important in phrases or photos.)
It was clear from the opening pictures in final night time’s episode, “The Longest Night,” that this was going to be a darkish one. The military of the lifeless faces off in opposition to the allied residing forces within the darkness, made darker by a bespoke storm introduced in by, let’s assume, a Mr. N.Ok., to additional demoralize the nice guys.
If you squint you may simply make out the biggest military ever assembled
Thematically and cinematographically, setting this chaotic, sprawling battle at night time is a robust inventive selection and a legitimate one, and I don’t query the showrunners, director, and so forth for it. But technically talking, setting this battle at night time, and in fog, is simply concerning the absolute worst case state of affairs for the medium this present is native to: streaming house video. Here’s why.
Compression issue
Video needs to be compressed with a purpose to be despatched effectively over the web, and though we’ve made monumental strides in video compression and the bandwidth obtainable to most properties, there are nonetheless basic limits.
The grasp video that HBO put collectively from the precise footage, FX, and coloration work that goes into making a bit of recent media can be enormous: a whole bunch of gigabytes if not terabytes. That’s as a result of the grasp has to incorporate all the knowledge on each pixel in each body, no exceptions.
Imagine should you tried to “stream” a terabyte-sized TV episode. You’d have to have the ability to obtain upwards of 200 megabytes per second for the total 80 minutes of this one. Few folks on the planet have that form of connection — it might mainly by no means cease buffering. Even 20 megabytes per second is asking an excessive amount of by an extended shot. 2 is doable — just below the 25 megabit velocity (that’s bits… divide by 8 to get bytes) we use to outline broadband obtain speeds.
So how do you flip a big file right into a small one? Compression — we’ve been doing it for a very long time, and video, although completely different from different sorts of knowledge in some methods, continues to be only a bunch of zeroes and ones. In truth it’s particularly inclined to sturdy compression due to how one video body is normally similar to the final and the subsequent one. There are all types of shortcuts you may take that cut back the file measurement immensely with out noticeably impacting the standard of the video. These compression and decompression methods match right into a system referred to as a “codec.”
But there are exceptions to that, and one in all them has to do with how compression handles coloration and brightness. Basically, when the picture could be very darkish, it may well’t show coloration very effectively.
The coloration of winter
Think about it like this: There are solely so some ways to explain colours in a couple of phrases. If you have got one phrase you may say purple, or perhaps ochre or vermilion relying in your interlocutor’s vocabulary. But when you have two phrases you may say darkish purple, darker purple, reddish black, and so forth. The codec has a restricted vocabulary as effectively, although its “words” are the numbers of bits it may well use to explain a pixel.
This lets it succinctly describe an enormous array of colours with little or no knowledge by saying, this pixel has this bit worth of coloration, this a lot brightness, and so forth. (I didn’t initially need to get into this, however that is what individuals are speaking about after they say bit depth, and even “highest high quality pixels.)
But this additionally implies that there are solely so many gradations of coloration and brightness it may well present. Going from a really darkish gray to a barely lighter gray, it would be capable of choose 5 intermediate shades. That’s completely high quality if it’s simply on the hem of a gown within the nook of the picture. But what if the entire picture is restricted to that small collection of shades?
Then you get what we see final night time. See how Jon (I feel) is made up nearly totally of solely a handful of various colours (brightnesses of an identical coloration, actually) in with massive apparent borders between them?
This situation is known as “banding,” and it’s onerous to not discover when you see the way it works. Images on video could be extremely detailed, however locations the place there are delicate modifications in coloration — usually a transparent sky or another massive however delicate gradient — will exhibit massive stripes because the codec goes from “darkest dark blue” to “darker dark blue” to “dark blue,” with no “darker darker dark blue” in between.
Check out this picture.
Above is a easy gradient encoded with excessive coloration depth. Below that’s the identical gradient encoded with lossy JPEG encoding — completely different from what HBO used, clearly, however you get the concept.
Banding has plagued streaming video endlessly, and it’s onerous to keep away from even in main productions — it’s only a facet impact of representing coloration digitally. It’s particularly distracting as a result of clearly our eyes don’t have that limitation. A high-definition display may very well present extra element than your eyes can discern from sofa distance, however coloration points? Our visible techniques flag them like loopy. You can reduce it, however it’s all the time going to be there, till the purpose when we’ve as many shades of gray as we’ve pixels on the display.
So again to final night time’s episode. Practically the whole present happened at night time, which removes about 3/4 of the codec’s brightness-color combos proper there. It additionally wasn’t a very colourful episode, a directorial or photographic selection that highlighted issues like flames and blood, however additional restricted the power to digitally signify what was on display.
It wouldn’t be too unhealthy if the background was black and folks have been lit effectively in order that they popped out, although. The final straw was the introduction of the cloud, fog, or blizzard, no matter you need to name it. This stored the brightness of the background simply excessive sufficient that the codec needed to signify it with one in all its handful of darkish greys, and the delicate actions of fog and smoke got here out as blotchy messes (usually referred to as “compression artifacts” as effectively) because the compression desperately tried to select what shade was finest for a bunch of pixels.
Just brightening it doesn’t sort things, both — as a result of the element is already crushed right into a slender vary of values, you simply get a bandy picture that by no means will get utterly black, making it look washed out, as you see right here:

(Anyway, the darkness is a stylistic selection. You might not agree with it, however that’s the way it’s imagined to look and messing with it past making the darkest particulars seen might be counterproductive.)
Now, it must be mentioned that compression doesn’t need to be this unhealthy. For one factor, the extra knowledge it’s allowed to make use of, the extra gradations it may well describe, and the much less extreme the banding. It’s additionally attainable (although I’m unsure the place it’s truly performed) to repurpose the remainder of the codec’s “vocabulary” to explain a scene the place its different coloration choices are restricted. That manner the total bandwidth can be utilized to explain an almost monochromatic scene despite the fact that strictly talking it must be solely utilizing a fraction of it.
But neither of those are seemingly an possibility for HBO: Increasing the bandwidth of the stream is expensive, since that is being despatched out to tens of hundreds of thousands of individuals — a bitrate enhance sufficiently big to alter the standard would additionally massively swell their knowledge prices. When you’re distributing to that many individuals, that additionally introduces the danger of hated buffering or errors in playback, that are clearly a giant no-no. It’s even attainable that HBO lowered the bitrate due to community limitations — “Game of Thrones” actually is on the frontier of digital distribution.
And utilizing an unique codec won’t be attainable as a result of solely generally used business ones are actually able to being utilized at scale. Kind of like how we attempt to use normal components for automobiles and computer systems.
This episode nearly actually seemed implausible within the mastering room and FX studios, the place they not solely had fastidiously calibrated screens with which to view it but in addition have been working with brighter footage (it might be darkened to style by the colorist) and fewer or no compression. They won’t even have seen the “final” model that followers “enjoyed.”
We’ll see the higher copy ultimately, however within the meantime the selection of darkness, fog, and livid motion meant the episode was going to be a muddy, glitchy mess on house TVs.
And whereas we’re on the subject…
You imply it’s not my TV?
Well… to be trustworthy, it could be that too. What I can inform you is that merely having a “better” TV by specs, similar to 4K or a better refresh fee or no matter, would make nearly no distinction on this case. Even built-in de-noising and de-banding algorithms can be onerous pressed to make sense of “The Long Night.” And among the finest new show applied sciences, OLED, may even make it look worse! Its “true blacks” are a lot darker than an LCD’s backlit blacks, so the leap to the darkest gray might be far more jarring.
That mentioned, it’s actually attainable that your TV can be arrange poorly. Those of us delicate to this sort of factor spend endlessly twiddling with settings and getting every little thing excellent for precisely this sort of state of affairs. There are dozens of us!

Now who’s “wasting his time” calibrating his TV?
— John Siracusa (@siracusa) April 29, 2019

Usually “calibration” is definitely a reasonably easy course of of constructing positive your TV isn’t on absolutely the worst settings, which sadly many are out of the field. Here’s a really primary three-point information to “calibrating” your TV:
Go via the “picture” or “video” menu and switch off something with a particular title, like “TrueMotion,” “Dynamic motion,” “Cinema mode,” or something like that. Most of those make issues look worse, particularly something that “smooths” movement. Turn these off first and by no means ever flip them on once more. Don’t mess with brightness, gamma, coloration house, something you need to flip up or down from 50 or no matter.
Figure out lighting by placing on , well-shot film within the state of affairs you normally watch stuff — at night time perhaps, with the corridor mild on or no matter. While the film is enjoying, click on via any coloration presets your TV has. These are sometimes issues like “natural,” “game,” “cinema,” “calibrated,” and so forth and take impact instantly. Some might make the picture look too inexperienced, or too darkish, or no matter. Play round with it and whichever makes it look finest, use that one. You can all the time change later – I actually change between a lighter and darker scheme relying on time of day and content material.
Don’t fear about HDR, dynamic lighting, and all that stuff for now. There’s numerous hype about these applied sciences and they’re nonetheless of their infancy. Few will work out of the field and the positive factors might or will not be price it. The reality is a effectively shot film from the ’60s or ’70s can look simply pretty much as good in the present day as a “high dynamic range” present shot on the newest 8K digital cinema rig. Just deal with ensuring the picture isn’t being actively interfered with by your TV and also you’ll be high quality.
Unfortunately none of these items will make “The Long Night” look any higher till HBO releases a brand new model of it. Those ugly bands and artifacts are baked proper in. But if you need to blame anybody, blame the streaming infrastructure that wasn’t ready for a present taking dangers in its presentation, dangers I’d characterize as daring and effectively executed, in contrast to the writing within the present these days. Oops, sorry, couldn’t assist myself.
If you actually need to expertise this present the way in which it was meant, the fanciest TV on the planet wouldn’t have helped final night time, although when the Blu-ray comes out you’ll be in for a deal with. But right here’s hoping the subsequent massive battle takes place in broad daylight.