do not work with your typical streaming AND NO IT WAS NOT AND STILL IS NOT YOUR TV as it is common to blame; your TV is probably not perfectly calibrated, but it can still show more than the dozen shades of blacks/grays the stream is indicating, like in the image attached. Or as this article says: "The lowest point for HBO streaming quality came in Game of Thrones' final season with an episode called The Long Night, also known as The Battle of Winterfell. Plagued by video artifacts and blotches of indistinct darkness, much of the episode looked bad. And I'm not the only one who noticed -- the "too dark" complaint caused quite a stir and I even gave folks advice on how to adjust their TVs to compensate. Fast-forward to December of last year when the Blu-ray came out in 4K HDR. It looks spectacular. Comparing the two on late-model 4K HDR TVs in my review, I found the high-dynamic range version was cleaner, more distinct, full of pop and just a treat for the eyes." -- it's not the cinematographer, it's not your TV, it's the stream. (https://www.cnet.com/tech/home-entertainment/why-cant-hbo... Video compression generally assumes that dark stuff doesn't matter as much as bright, in-focus stuff, so it is the first thing to go when it has to stay under the bitrate budget. Then there's a whole thing about color spaces that I don't really know much about which negatively impacts darker colors/blacks/grays. So thanks for the tip to wait for the Blueray Release!