Game of Thrones

[mechman]

Can't believe we don't have a thread on arguably the best show on TV at this time! Anyone watching this season? Anyone catch any of the Easter Eggs in any of the episodes?

Only two more this season and winter is here!

 

[tripplej]

I don't have HBO so I never saw any of the series.. Will wait till they have the box set available.

 

[mechman]

Seasons 1-6 Blu-ray was a Prime Day sale.

 

[tripplej]

How many seasons will there be total by the time this series is done?

 

[mechman]

One more after this one - eight.

 

[tripplej]

Cool. I can then get all 8 together.

 

[tripplej]

hmm, we don't have a trailer already for this series so here it is..

Spoilers in the trailer so don't watch it if you haven't seen it and want to watch it later.

 

[tripplej]

April 2019

 

[mechman]

This is the last season, right?

 

[tripplej]

Yes, final season.

 

[tripplej]

 

[mechman]

I have to admit that last night's show - Season 8 Episode 3 - was probably one of the more disappointing episodes I've ever seen from this series. What could have been something phenomenal turned into something rather dumbfounding.

I've watched the majority of this show in my home theater on my 100" screen and I cannot recall being disappointed before until last night. Instead of just sitting back and enjoying the episode, I found myself reaching for my projector remote and hastily changing settings to try and get the image to look good. Today I even re-watched the episode on my 65" LG OLED just to confirm my suspicions.

I think the video production crew fell a bit short on this episode. Never mind the director's choice of constant in your face close up shots during one of the most epic night battles ever filmed, but the whole thing seemed too gray when it should have been more black. The black levels on this episode were some of the worst I've ever seen. This was a night battle seen and the bezel on my LG are darker than anything in the episode! To put this in perspective, the crowd at the Dallas Stars/St. Louis Blues game was as dark as my bezel.

So what's really at play here?

First there's the compression. Compression is a fact of life nowadays whether you're streaming, watching via cable or satellite, or even over the air. Everything is compressed. It's a fact of life.

Bandwidth - for us streamers this is another issue but I saw no bandwidth artifacts while watching via HBO Now last night. I just had terrible black levels. Bandwidth and compression artifacts go hand in hand and generally show up as blocky type artifacts or pixelation, image noise, etc.

Finally, there's HBO. You've got Amazon, Netflix and a few other companies out there putting out everything they can get their hands on in 4K and High Dynamic Range. And then you have HBO who struggle to get 1080p SDR correct. It's too bad Netflix couldn't have finished this one off for HBO.

So you combine all of those things and you get what I, and apparently a lot of other people, witnessed last night. A historic episode that took over 55 nights to shoot that fell short. At least the content of the episode itself was excellent. Just sad to see the video fall so far short.

 

[Asere]

I'm embarrassed having to admit I have never seen one episode of GOT. I didn't have HBO at the time when it was released and still don't have HBO. I am getting tempted to watch it now that its finally almost over. I may do a blind buy here soon.

 

[tripplej]

wait till the full set comes out, season 1 thru 8. You can pre-order it now thou.

Currently, season 1 thru 7 is available via amazon if you are in a hurry.

 

[Asere]

wait till the full set comes out, season 1 thru 8. You can pre-order it now thou.

Currently, season 1 thru 7 is available via amazon if you are in a hurry.

Yes, I think I will wait. Strangely though they do not have the complete season in 4K. I currently don't have use for 4K but I rather buy 4K these days for future proof.

 

[tripplej]

I am sure more variations will be made once the final season is officially over. Wait for Christmas sales as well.

 

[mechman]

I've merged the two threads.

And hopefully they fix the awful video production from Season 8 Episode 3 before they put it on disc.

 

[tripplej]

In regards to that episode, check this out.

per wired,

"Fabian Wagner, the cinematographer behind the episode, claims the problem lies not with the production team but with viewers’ own television setups. “A lot of the problem is that a lot of people don’t know how to tune their TVs properly,” he says. “A lot of people also unfortunately watch it on small iPads, which in no way can do justice to a show like that anyway.”"

Any thoughts???

 

[Sonnie Parker]

He's crazy ... I'll trust our video guru (mech) over his ignorance any day!

 

[tripplej]

I agree with you Sonnie. I am sure Mech has his TV very well calibrated and yet he also was not able to see much. lol.

I talked with a few friends and they mentioned they had to watch the episode two times, the second time by putting their TV on vivid mode in order to see something anything. How crazy is that???

 

[mechman]

In regards to that episode, check this out.

per wired,



Any thoughts???

Yes. You know I had a long reply typed up when I thought "I wonder what it would look like if I dumbed the signal down to 1080p and SDR?" I did that and it looked a lot better. But that brings me to one of my original points wondering why a major producer of popular shows (HBO) is still putting out 1080P SDR? And it brings new questions in why it looks so bad when it's upconverted to 4K HDR? I have never noticed anything looking that bad when upconverted. Currently I'm re-watching the series Deadwood on HBO and it looks awesome upconverted.

 

[mechman]

He's crazy ... I'll trust our video guru (mech) over his ignorance any day!

You know I kind of flashed back to HTS and my argument with that industry guy regarding 3D. Do you remember that? I wonder if he remembers me telling him 3D was a fad and would die off?

 

[tripplej]

I am not surprised it looked better at 1080p!

Glad you were able to see some improvement.

Hopefully HBO and broadcasters will show their shows in the most optimal setting.

 

[mechman]

With the projector it was a bit different. 1080p SDR introduced some weird video noise - almost like HDMI sparklies but they were a a bit different as they weren't over the whole screen but around the outline of characters and in the dark areas of their coats. I didn't have a lot of time to mess around with it but suffice it to say that I couldn't get rid of it with 1080p SDR. When I switched to 1080p HDR, everything looked better and, more than likely, closer to what they intended.

I think it's safe to say that there are issues with the HBO video and those of us using streaming services that automatically upconvert everything to our preferred formats need to be aware of that. It is weird though that other episodes of GoT, Deadwood and many other shows/movies on HBO are unaffected. Maybe I need to pay closer attention? I did search to see if I could find the last Harry Potter movie on HBO but it's not there. That movie is my go to for checking black level crush.

 

[tripplej]

I did read that Game of Thrones was going with a darker theme so they are making the scenes also go "darker" to go along with the theme so maybe that is the reason other shows on HBO are not affected?? Not sure..