HBO's Game of Thrones season 6 discussion thread- airing 4/24/16 (No book spoilers)

[zinfamous]

Where was Bronn? Guess he is still on the road or laying in ambush.
.

I was wondering that. I kinda assumed that he was approaching WinterFell, saw the army of the dead in his way, and noped himself on towards a Bravosian whorehouse.


..I rewatched about half of the episode last night as it was playing on HBO. I set the TV to box store torchmode so that I could see what was going on. It's funny--the whole Arya in the kitchen/dining hall/library whatever area....I couldn't see any of it the other night. I just saw her face and hiding behind a thing from time to time. I didn't know she was under a table. I didn't know there were 6 or more wights in there with her, lol.

Though, I now appreciate the darkness of that episode...I think it was kinda brilliant and with a less lossy source it would be great. Especially the scenes on the walls and around Winterfell, the trench, where the only source of light is the fire. Pretty awesome, really. Reminds me of Barry Lyndon (Kubrick Flick), where the only light used in the filming of it was all natural, period lighting. So, dark scenes were only lit by available candle light. It does kinda pull you into the Long Night of the fight, the confusion and chaos of what the defending army had to deal with. ...at least the outside parts. I would have appreciated a bit more light for those interior scenes. It's not like earlier night scenes weren't unnaturally lit before.

I also didn't catch the moment in the conversation that Arya had with Fire Crotch, reminding her about the eyes, that Fire Crotch directly instructed her to go off and shank the Night King. They both got it, I pretty much missed that (honestly, I don't think I could see Arya's expression and that she ran off with purpose in response to that, lol)

When Fire Crotch went with Syrio's line: "What do we say to death?" (honestly thought she was going to pull of her mask and we learn it was Syrio all along!"), Arya is like "Not today." ....it makes sense. The Night King has often been referred to as death--I think Bran mentioned this in recent episodes, going back to previous season. It's what the Walkers are. Night King is basically, on Westeros, The God of Death in the "flesh." So if you're literally going to tell the God of Death to eff off, you go do it when you have the only real chance to do it.

People hate, I guess, that it ended that way, but it's been written into the story since the very first season.

 

[purbeast0]

Yeah the main issue with the darkness I believe was strictly due to compression problems. I was using HBO GO and you could clearly tell it was artifacting from compression. Like you would see these big areas of different shades of "black" that looked like 32x32 sized pixels. I would love to watch this on my projector on bluray. Also the sound would be much better than the stream.

 

[zinfamous]

Yeah the main issue with the darkness I believe was strictly due to compression problems. I was using HBO GO and you could clearly tell it was artifacting from compression. Like you would see these big areas of different shades of "black" that looked like 32x32 sized pixels. I would love to watch this on my projector on bluray. Also the sound would be much better than the stream.

holy crap the sound is so terrible. I think it's worse through Amazon than when I was watching through HBO Go 2 years ago (way, way worse actually). The opening graphic bit is the most obvious. Streaming through Amazon, it's like the TV is almost muted.

 

[Aikouka]

..I rewatched about half of the episode last night as it was playing on HBO. I set the TV to box store torchmode so that I could see what was going on. It's funny--the whole Arya in the kitchen/dining hall/library whatever area....I couldn't see any of it the other night. I just saw her face and hiding behind a thing from time to time. I didn't know she was under a table. I didn't know there were 6 or more wights in there with her, lol.

Hm, I didn't have any trouble seeing that stuff, but even with that, the episode was still really dark for me with the heavy compression artifacts on black areas as mentioned by @purbeast0. Although, my brightness is always set 1 as per the recommendations on Rtings for the TV. On the other hand, I think the HBO NOW app doesn't properly disable Dolby Vision as I'm pretty sure Match Content is turned on in my Apple TV's settings, but Dolby Vision is definitely activated due to how I cannot see the volume bar from my AVR. (One limitation of my Denon model is that it cannot overlay the OSD over Dolby Vision content.) It's plausible that forcing Dolby Vision might be part of why it was so bright.

Speaking of the volume bar, I had to turn my volume up quite a bit to hear it... I believe from 56 to 65, which is quite a decent jump.

 

[Bitek]

I liked the episode, dark lighting not withstanding. I was only confused in a few bits, like inside the crypt.

I still don't understand why the strategy wasn't to send both dragons out long before the dead army even got there, and keep torching them and torching them until there was no army left but the Night King himself.

Probably because it would have been boring more than because it wouldn't have worked.

I was really annoyed by all the battle tactics, to the point where it got distracting as it was so stupid. If it's intentional commentary on Jon and Dany's leadership, then they are incompetent and deserve to lose the throne. If it's the writers trying to write her forces out of the story, use a better plot device, this one sucked.

I agree there was an overall criminal underuse of artillery (which I'll categorize the dragons under.)

The second was abject stupidity of the use of cavalry. Why are they sent way out front? Said artillery barely fired, but then had to stop lest hitting their own troops. Meanwhile D+J are up on high spectating. Way to protect your ppl Khalesi...
Speaking of, WTF was the plan before Red showed up to light their swords? Just send them in with ineffective weapons vs undead and just hand NK a cavalry?! Jesus Fk!

No real use of archers I saw, yet all those dragon glass arrowheads being made..

With the cavalry stupidly wiped out, artillery barely used, and magical aircover summoned, the Unsullied phalanx were forced to face the undead at nearly full strength and got worked. (I'll assume at least they had dragonglass tipped spears, since the living had so much they stuck them on all the logs they planned to just set on fire....)

Meanwhile the WW are safely sitting waaaayyyyy behind their lines unguarded. Gee, would have been a nice time to have some cavalry to send behind the line and attack the generals (and maybe end the battle).. plus force the undead troops to partially turn back and confront/chase off the horsemen, releaving the phalanx & swordsmen a bit, and maybe open up some space for the artillery to fire in....

But nope. Dumbass, thoughtless battle plan which just turned into a meat grinder (for everyone but the main characters somehow) and Arya's elite assassin skills saving the living from their stupidity at the last second.

At this point I hope Cersei wins, Bronn double crosses her and takes the throne. Everyone (save Arya) is too dumb to live.

Even the Lady of Winterfell and the Genius Dwarf. So smart he wanted to go out and help command the battle to turn the tide, but couldn't foresee hiding from Undead Lazarus by locking yourself in a crypt w. no weapons may be a bad f'ing plan.

 

[zinfamous]

you know, the only way that I can explain the shitty tactics is that we know they were setting up Bran in a spot to draw the Night King out. I wonder if they legit intended to waste half or more of their army, in order to distract the undead army through the shittiness of the tactics, thus encouraging the Night King to ignore the battle and go straight for Bran? That's what I tell myself, anyway...

....oh wait, but then Jon and Dany decided to start fighting the Night King anyway and get into a dragon fight that pretty much ruined that part of the plan.

 

[purbeast0]

Dany seeing the entire Dothraki get wiped off the face of the earth in about 10 seconds caused her to act irrational and deviate from the plan. I would have had no clue about that had I not watched the BTS after the show.

 

[destrekor]

..I rewatched about half of the episode last night as it was playing on HBO. I set the TV to box store torchmode so that I could see what was going on. It's funny--the whole Arya in the kitchen/dining hall/library whatever area....I couldn't see any of it the other night. I just saw her face and hiding behind a thing from time to time. I didn't know she was under a table. I didn't know there were 6 or more wights in there with her, lol.

Though, I now appreciate the darkness of that episode...I think it was kinda brilliant and with a less lossy source it would be great. Especially the scenes on the walls and around Winterfell, the trench, where the only source of light is the fire. Pretty awesome, really. Reminds me of Barry Lyndon (Kubrick Flick), where the only light used in the filming of it was all natural, period lighting. So, dark scenes were only lit by available candle light. It does kinda pull you into the Long Night of the fight, the confusion and chaos of what the defending army had to deal with. ...at least the outside parts. I would have appreciated a bit more light for those interior scenes. It's not like earlier night scenes weren't unnaturally lit before.

Sounds like you experienced some significant black crush. I watched it on my plasma, and while it was definitely dark, a tad bit darker than I would have preferred, that entire scene of Arya in the library was perfectly clear for me.

Video source (stream, cable, etc) and hardware in-between TV and source will all play a role in how well details get pulled out of shadows, but the TV plays a major role too and if it can't get black enough to where it all looks the same.

In my case, I watched the HBO Go stream via a Roku3, HDMI to AV Receiver, then HDMI to Panny Plasma.

 

[destrekor]

Dany seeing the entire Dothraki get wiped off the face of the earth in about 10 seconds caused her to act irrational and deviate from the plan. I would have had no clue about that had I not watched the BTS after the show.

Interesting. I too didn't make any of that out. I just thought "that's Dany for you" and, hell, that could have been the plan. We were never privy so how could we tell the plan was to wait longer and not take off when she/they did?



Also it sure seems now that the Night King was a Targaryen after all. I didn't connect the dots while watching the episode, but that's got to be the only reason he survived the blast of dragon fire.
Then again, we also haven't seen any White Walker subjected to dragon fire, so perhaps that's a quirk and it's only Dragonglass or Valyrian steel that can kill a walker.
So yup, I'm back to being in the middle on that debate - no evidence is clear cut yet and probably never will be. So the Night King rides an ice dragon, but in my mind he both killed and converted it so perhaps that alone would make it possible to ride the converted dragon. Yet, that could still be a sign he's a Targaryen so who knows. I don't think we'll ever get the full answer, not from the show at least.

 

[zinfamous]

Sounds like you experienced some significant black crush. I watched it on my plasma, and while it was definitely dark, a tad bit darker than I would have preferred, that entire scene of Arya in the library was perfectly clear for me.

Video source (stream, cable, etc) and hardware in-between TV and source will all play a role in how well details get pulled out of shadows, but the TV plays a major role too and if it can't get black enough to where it all looks the same.

In my case, I watched the HBO Go stream via a Roku3, HDMI to AV Receiver, then HDMI to Panny Plasma.

yeah...I really miss my plasma. 720p, but it had 10x the PQ of this shitty 4k screen. It's a ~2015 model Samsung something, and the backlight bleed is obvious. It's just....really really bad, especially in content like this.

 

[beginner99]

you know, the only way that I can explain the shitty tactics is that we know they were setting up Bran in a spot to draw the Night King out./QUOTE]

Yeah. They knew they ahd no change regardless their tactics simply because all their dead will be recruited and that is exactly what happened. I mean they said themselves. Their plan was to kill the Night King to end it and that is exactly what happened. And to think that would have been easy to achieve with few death, simply no. The night king wouldn't have exposed himself if he hadn't thought he had won.

 

[beginner99]

Yeah the main issue with the darkness I believe was strictly due to compression problems. I was using HBO GO and you could clearly tell it was artifacting from compression. Like you would see these big areas of different shades of "black" that looked like 32x32 sized pixels. I would love to watch this on my projector on bluray. Also the sound would be much better than the stream.

And then they wonder why so many pirate when the paid quality is worse than the pirated. At least by the sounds of it. I had no issues with the darkness. Well it was dark, but I could always see what was going on.

 

[Skel]

Hm, I didn't have any trouble seeing that stuff, but even with that, the episode was still really dark for me with the heavy compression artifacts on black areas as mentioned by @purbeast0. Although, my brightness is always set 1 as per the recommendations on Rtings for the TV. On the other hand, I think the HBO NOW app doesn't properly disable Dolby Vision as I'm pretty sure Match Content is turned on in my Apple TV's settings, but Dolby Vision is definitely activated due to how I cannot see the volume bar from my AVR. (One limitation of my Denon model is that it cannot overlay the OSD over Dolby Vision content.) It's plausible that forcing Dolby Vision might be part of why it was so bright.

Speaking of the volume bar, I had to turn my volume up quite a bit to hear it... I believe from 56 to 65, which is quite a decent jump.

For whatever reason with DirecTV I've always had issues with HBO's volume. It's always really low for whatever reason, except for Veep. That show is at normal levels. The other HBO channels don't seem to have the issue, only the main one coming out of the east coast. I've called DirecTV a few times over issues like this and they tell me it's by design.. I do point out that ever since ATT bought DirecTV they've done nothing but go downhill fast. Not sure I'll keep them once my bill goes back to normal (they dropped my charges drastically the last time I called and said I was going to drop them), but I'm not sure anyone else is really better.

Dany seeing the entire Dothraki get wiped off the face of the earth in about 10 seconds caused her to act irrational and deviate from the plan. I would have had no clue about that had I not watched the BTS after the show.

I've said it over the Walking Dead quite a few times. If you have to watch another show/internet interview, or whatever, you've failed at storytelling. In this case I'm not sure this one really matters much. It's not like she hasn't ever gone off script before, and she was effective. I choose to hate her for parking her dragon in danger just zoning out while Jon walked away. She's really beyond lucky she didn't lose another dragon.

Interesting. I too didn't make any of that out. I just thought "that's Dany for you" and, hell, that could have been the plan. We were never privy so how could we tell the plan was to wait longer and not take off when she/they did?



Also it sure seems now that the Night King was a Targaryen after all. I didn't connect the dots while watching the episode, but that's got to be the only reason he survived the blast of dragon fire.
Then again, we also haven't seen any White Walker subjected to dragon fire, so perhaps that's a quirk and it's only Dragonglass or Valyrian steel that can kill a walker.
So yup, I'm back to being in the middle on that debate - no evidence is clear cut yet and probably never will be. So the Night King rides an ice dragon, but in my mind he both killed and converted it so perhaps that alone would make it possible to ride the converted dragon. Yet, that could still be a sign he's a Targaryen so who knows. I don't think we'll ever get the full answer, not from the show at least.

If find myself annoyed at people insisting that these type of things must be connected. The NK could raise the dead, commanded everything, could make magic lances that could kill a dragon with one shot, and could see the 3 eyed raven in his dream state. Yet somehow because he couldn't be burned to death he must be a Targaryen. I'm not sure why somethings can't just be.. It's not like making him a Targaryen would add anything to the story. If they do, I'll be very disappointed.

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Hot take: the episode would have been more satisfying if the DusEx on the night king cost Aria her life.

It just didn’t cost enough emotionally to justify killing the baddie that kicked off the show.

 

[zinfamous]

If find myself annoyed at people insisting that these type of things must be connected. The NK could raise the dead, commanded everything, could make magic lances that could kill a dragon with one shot, and could see the 3 eyed raven in his dream state. Yet somehow because he couldn't be burned to death he must be a Targaryen. I'm not sure why somethings can't just be.. It's not like making him a Targaryen would add anything to the story. If they do, I'll be very disappointed.

Well, it does matter...if the Night King is a Targaryen, then he is the one true King of the Seven Kingdoms, considering how old he must be. Awkward!

 

[Dr. Zaus]

Also stop your bitching about bad tactics - they made a big deal about pointing out how the smart people were going to hide in the crypts from the bad guy that raises the dead.

 

[thebestMAX]

Just an FYI on the sound and darkness.

Watched HBO through Comcrap on my 12 year old Panny Plasma and while the scenes were naturally dark I think I could see everything as it was supposed to be. I would have liked a little brighter picture though. Library scene couldnt have been any clearer.

Now for the sound. Comcrap has been a crap shoot for years as to volume. Channels vary from a volume setting of 11 to 15 on my TV , quite a spread in Db really. I listened through my surround system naturally and sound was quite good. Dothraki horses charging had my sub shaking the floor and I could hear dialog clearly, not always the case with GOT. Good surround effects also.

Sound on other shows, some through Netflix on my Roku also vary greatly. Bad offender is the original Guardians of the Galaxy for low volume.
Surround sound also varies greatly.

Bad sound mixing and transfer has always been my pet peeve.

 

[purbeast0]

I'm not talking about the volume of the sound, I'm talking about the quality of it. I watch on my high end home theater and this isn't just a problem with HBO GO, it's a problem with streaming in general. The sound simply isn't comparable to bluray due to bandwidth issues. Same with video.

Watching that episode on bluray would be a lot better for both picture and sound reasons due to the lossless quality with not having to deal with compression or any sort.

 

[Paratus]

I’m not sure what you guys are talking about. While it was night the scenes weren’t too dark.

Like this one

 

[RearAdmiral]

Yeah the main issue with the darkness I believe was strictly due to compression problems. I was using HBO GO and you could clearly tell it was artifacting from compression. Like you would see these big areas of different shades of "black" that looked like 32x32 sized pixels. I would love to watch this on my projector on bluray. Also the sound would be much better than the stream.

The awful compression and black crushing was the worst I have ever seen in any stream. Shame, shame, shame!

 

[Homerboy]

Dany seeing the entire Dothraki get wiped off the face of the earth in about 10 seconds caused her to act irrational and deviate from the plan. I would have had no clue about that had I not watched the BTS after the show.

I watch those things too for every episode. Honestly, I think half of it is bullshit and just made-up crap by D&D etc. If they wanted Dany to be so upset, then SHOW THAT in the episode. Don't expect people to figure it out because they can't when your writing is so horrible.

Even Dinklage made a comment about how apparently dumb it was for them to hide in the crypts. He says something along the lines of "he (Perter Dikelage) being smarted than Tyrion... whcih is odd"

 

[Homerboy]

If you want to understand why it was so dark and pixelated, per the cinematographer, your TVs suck and you don't know what you're doing:

https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/gam...rapher-dark-battle-of-winterfell-episode.html

“A lot of the problem is that a lot of people don’t know how to tune their TVs properly,” cinematographer Fabian Wagner, who shot the episode, told Wired UK. “A lot of people also unfortunately watch it on small iPads, which in no way can do justice to a show like that anyway.”

Wagner added that because Thrones has staged so many epic battles over the years, the showrunners wanted to set final war between the living and the dead apart from previous confrontations. Apparently that meant setting in near total darkness. But don’t stress, if you didn’t see something, that means you weren’t supposed to see it anyway. “Another look would have been wrong,” Wagner said. “Everything we wanted people to see is there.” But really, if he watched it through extremely expensive cameras and feedback monitors, how does Wagner really know if “The Long Night” wasn’t too dark for home viewers? “I know it wasn’t too dark because I shot it,” he told TMZ. And that’s that on that!

Maybe these people need to realize that the VAST majority of viewers are watching on sub $500 TVs (several years old) in normally lit rooms, have no idea what "calibration" even means or that it's even a "thing". Pretty pompous arrogant stance. His (and many other's) job is to create a product that is usable/watchable by the audience. They failed.

 

[purbeast0]

I watched the episode (as I do all) on a 120" screen with my projector that has been calibrated to shit and is as perfect as the picture can get and watched it in pitch black, other than the light from the projector.

The problem wasn't due to cinematography though, it was due to streaming and artifacting that our streaming technology simply can't do anything about yet. It's not feasable to stream at bitrates appropriate for the quality of bluray, both audio and visual, yet.

 

[Homerboy]

that's sorta the point. There's no defend anything he said.
You can have a great TV on the viewer's end and it's still going to look like shit. He filmed it on $40K cameras and watched/edited on $30K monitors - all the best shit money can buy. Most importantly, he watched/edited it with ZERO compression. If HBO and the producers and their staff don't realize that quite virtually everyone watching their creation is going to be watching it compressed (streaming to an iPad or a "projector that has been calibrated to shit") because they have NO OTHER WAY TO SEE IT, then they don't understand what they are doing.

I'm sure the BR release will look MUCH better as it will be the best quality available. Not to mention I will bet ANYTHING they go back and clean this episode up significantly due to the issues people have been bitching about.

Sadly, the storyline will remain the same.

 

[zinfamous]

If you want to understand why it was so dark and pixelated, per the cinematographer, your TVs suck and you don't know what you're doing:

https://www.vulture.com/2019/04/gam...rapher-dark-battle-of-winterfell-episode.html



Maybe these people need to realize that the VAST majority of viewers are watching on sub $500 TVs (several years old) in normally lit rooms, have no idea what "calibration" even means or that it's even a "thing". Pretty pompous arrogant stance. His (and many other's) job is to create a product that is usable/watchable by the audience. They failed.

yeah, it's not that, though. It's the shit quality of the source. No one watched this on physical, uncompressed media.