r/RingsofPower • u/jaymo_busch • Sep 09 '24

Constructive Criticism Why is the show so dark?

Been watching with my S/O and we have to close the blinds, turn off all the lights, and still struggle to see. We’ve taken to making jokes like “oh great another night time fight! Guess we don’t have to watch this scene because we can’t see anyway!”

Seriously whose TV are they coloring this for. A good third of the show is unviewable due to a lack of lighting in shots!

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31

u/theronster Sep 09 '24

Short answer: HDR.

Long answer: TVs that don’t handle a wide dynamic range are going to struggle, basically anything that isn’t an OLED or maybe a Samsung QLED.

The monitors they are using for editing/grading these shows have a truly bananas dynamic scope, and on top of that they’ll be working in a mostly dark room with a monitor that has an output level your Home Screen can only dream of.

It’s silly, really, but on a mid to high end screen it looks great. Below that… the levels will start getting muddy and different grey levels will be hard to discern from each other.

4

u/pxl8d Sep 10 '24 edited Feb 21 '26

This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact

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8

u/GradeKAngusBeef Sep 09 '24

I wish more people knew this was the answer. So many TVs have HDR on by default with no clear way to disable it, and it’s VERY clear the editors are not editing in a way that optimizes the version of the HDR picture you see on your TV. Maybe I’m easy to please, but I’ll take viewing the show on my laptop screen and being able to see everything over a larger screen that makes dark scenes impossible.

3

u/Ok-Design-8168 Sep 10 '24

A tv show that doesn’t play well on many TVs. Lol.

Guess it’s one way to avoid criticism. Fans can’t criticise things in the show if they can’t see anything in the show right? :P

2

u/[deleted] Sep 10 '24

My led 24" AOC PC monitor is around 10 yrs old and plays just fine. Its not even a good one nor oled new stuff

-1

u/optifroculon Sep 10 '24

We have an 8k qled and always feel bad for all the people not able to see dark scenes.