"The Outsider" poor picture quality

iangreasby

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Anyone else think this looks awful? I watched episode 1 last night and it contains obvious banding/contouring in some dark scenes. The worst example is at 6 minutes in (the downloaded version) when the guy who discovered the body is being interviewed, just before you see him in shot. It's a real shame as the drama itself is very good.
 
just downloaded the HD version and it looks fine to me on my Q7F , out of curiosity I downloaded the SD version and it looked shocking exactly as you said , not being funny but you didn't download the SD version by mistake did you .....
 
No, I just checked, it's definitely the HD. I had recorded the original broadcast and then confirmed my findings by downloading it as well. They were both the same. I watched it on my LG B8 65" which has been professionally calibrated. I also checked it on an old HD TV that I have in the bedroom (it's only a 26" screen so doesn't normally show any flaws), it looked terrible on that too. The general PQ is more than acceptable, it's just some of the dark scenes. I would say they are worse than in "Game of Thrones". I will watch episode 2 over the weekend, hoping for an improvement.
 
strange , I normally pick up on things like this but saw nothing .....
 
I just has a quick check again. It doesn't look anywhere near as bad in daylight. I watched last night in dark room conditions.
 
I just has a quick check again. It doesn't look anywhere near as bad in daylight. I watched last night in dark room conditions.

I watched in daylight , mind you , the actual program seemed very dark to me anyway .....
 
result , its not something I will probably watch , got far to much on the go already , shouldn't be like that though .....
 
I needed to remind myself of Ep1, but yes, it’s awful. It is HBO though which 9 times out of 10 means dreadful PQ in my experience.
For once I don’t really blame Sky. The download is 3Gb which should be enough for an hour of decent PQ. The broadcast version was only 2.2GB.
Why Sky aren’t demanding better quality from HBO is another matter.

PS, copied and pasted in to the Sky community thread in the highly unlikely hope that it will make Sky sit up and take notice.
 
I needed to remind myself of Ep1, but yes, it’s awful. It is HBO though which 9 times out of 10 means dreadful PQ in my experience.
For once I don’t really blame Sky. The download is 3Gb which should be enough for an hour of decent PQ. The broadcast version was only 2.2GB.
Why Sky aren’t demanding better quality from HBO is another matter.

PS, copied and pasted in to the Sky community thread in the highly unlikely hope that it will make Sky sit up and take notice.

I already flagged this up on the Sky Q forum. One of the mods moved it from the main Q forum to the Sky TV "What's on" forum where nobody is likely to read it! I get the distinct impression that they don't take too kindly to any negative comment. :confused:
 
I already flagged this up on the Sky Q forum. One of the mods moved it from the main Q forum to the Sky TV "What's on" forum where nobody is likely to read it! I get the distinct impression that they don't take too kindly to any negative comment. :confused:
Yeah, I know. That’s where I copied it to. It’s depressing that most people don’t seem to notice or care.

Incidentally, I’ve been binging on Boardwalk Empire over the past week or so. It’s also HBO and the download sizes are very similar at 2.8Gb. It’s almost pristine in comparison.
I don’t know when HBO decided we don’t deserve decent picture quality, but it wasn’t always this way.
 
I think it’s a victim of it’s own “Artistic Intent”. It was actually filmed on Sony Venice cameras capable of 6K resolution, but they have used a muted colour pallette at around 100 nits to give the impression of impending doom.
 
I gave up watching it as it was too dark even in scenes set in daylight.
 
Just out of curiosity I tried watching on my iPad Pro with the Sky Go app and achieved exactly the same horrific PQ as my C7 OLED.
I have fed this back to Sky via their forum. I’ve no expectation of anything being done.
This is ep1 at about 46 minutes if anyone wants to look for themselves.
B03DAD51-7E61-4531-9800-4DB99575078B.jpeg
 
I seem to remember similar picture issues when "Westworld" was broadcast by Sky. That was about 3 years ago and I was watching on a 50" HD LCD, not a 65" 4K OLED as now. I suppose the bigger in screen size we go, and the higher resolution, the more we are likely to see artifacts like these which are presumably caused by too much compression. Having said that, Sky/HBO (whoever is to blame) have gone too far with this particular content.
 
It's par for the course with content on Sky these days unfortunately, bloody joke that we have to put up with subpar quality and pay through the nose for it. Shame it wasn't available in UHD really although even that would only be equivalent of HD on other streaming services...
 
I seem to remember similar picture issues when "Westworld" was broadcast by Sky. That was about 3 years ago and I was watching on a 50" HD LCD, not a 65" 4K OLED as now. I suppose the bigger in screen size we go, and the higher resolution, the more we are likely to see artifacts like these which are presumably caused by too much compression. Having said that, Sky/HBO (whoever is to blame) have gone too far with this particular content.
OLED certainly makes these issues more visible. Someone posted the same screen shot from his DX902 LCD on the Sky forum and it look surprisingly clean. You’ve probably seen it.
Thats been bugging me a bit before it occurred to me that I have an LCD screen on my lap. I’ve proved, I think, that the only difference is that an LCD tends to hide artefacts, but the underlying noise, contouring, etc, etc is still there if you look hard enough. I’d rather have the best screen available than one that hides things.
Maybe the Sky employee who got involved will come back with an answer. Not holding my breath though.:D
 
@Andrew1472 . I've watched those scenes on 65" 4K OLED, 65" 4K LCD and a cheap 26" HD LCD and the artifacts are very noticeable on all 3 screens, just in different ways. However, when fed with a decent quality broadcast/stream the OLED picture wins by a distance.
 
I've mentioned this also in the TV shows thread, but put my name down as another that is appaled by how bad this show looks on SkyQ. It's as bad as the notoriously dark episode of GoT was back in Spring last year - you'd have thought after all the complaints back then, HBO would supply Sky with a better quality copy.
 
I've mentioned this also in the TV shows thread, but put my name down as another that is appaled by how bad this show looks on SkyQ. It's as bad as the notoriously dark episode of GoT was back in Spring last year - you'd have thought after all the complaints back then, HBO would supply Sky with a better quality copy.
Your views at Re: "The Outsider" poor picture quality would be very welcome.
I expect it’s head against a brick wall stuff, but the more pressure on Sky the better. At least one employee has taken notice, not sure if we’ve scared her off though.:)
 

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