HELEN-SLOAN/HBO
Game of Thrones Episode 3 of Season 8 was dark and full of terrors, but actually more darkness than terror. Fabian Wagner, who was the cinematographer for the very dark Battle of Winterfell episode, gave an interview where he recommended that viewers should have their TVs “properly tuned.” We’ll look at some ways that you can adjust your television to maximize the screen so you can actually see what happened during the Great War in Game of Thrones.
Much of Sunday’s 82-minute war of the living versus the undead was tough to see because it was at night. There was a financial reason to make the battlefield dark as you don’t need the top-of-the-line CGI for the action to look believable. But you can adjust your TV so you can actually see what happened in those very dark scenes.
This Game of Thrones credits screenshot has to be fake, there were no light operators for Episode 3 of Season 8… pic.twitter.com/ezsUpWFTTT
— Paul Sacca (@Paul_Sacca) April 30, 2019
First off, make sure you are watching Game of Thrones in complete darkness, no lights from anywhere except your glowing television. You can increase the brightness levels, but if you go too far then it will ruin the contrast of the screen and could overexpose the picture. You can try to adjust the noise reduction, which might help. To make the best adjustments pause on a scene that is extremely dark and then play around with the settings until it looks good to your eyes.
If your television has different modes you may want to select movie or cinema mode, but you definitely don’t want the vivid setting. If you have an LCD TV you may want to adjust the backlight to a higher level for better clarity. On OLED and QLED TVs you can improve dark scenes by tweaking the Gamma control.
If you make the adjustments and the picture still looks cruddy, then maybe you just have a terrible TV. If you’re using an LCD TV, it may be time to upgrade to an OLED or QLED TVs where each pixel is self-illuminating. OLED and QLED displays have far superior black levels and contrast, which will shine when watching very dimly-lit Game of Thrones scenes.
https://twitter.com/GiftedNapper/status/1122744922170204160
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It might not even be your TV’s fault. If you are streaming from HBO Go or HBO Now, the stream might be slow or have low internet bandwidth, which both affect the quality of the picture. This means that you don’t want anyone else slowing down your internet by using other streaming services or online gaming.
Not to sound like a lazy customer service rep but… “Have you tried resetting your router?” This could help streaming speeds. Another option is to try streaming on different devices such as the HBO Go app on the TV or on gaming console or your dongles such as Chromecast.
If none of this works then may I suggest that you watch the best scenes from Episode 3 in videos that have been brightened with excellent edits? Redditors from the Game of Thrones Reddit have done the Lord of Light’s work by brightening several key scenes from Sunday’s Game of Thrones. Now you can see all of the action whether you have a $20,000 TV or a $200 smartphone.
Here are some of the enhanced scenes:
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[CNET]