Finding the season too dark? Colors desaturated? Some TV setting suggestions...

[cal888]

One of the most common complaints about the season 3 premiere was the episode being "too dark" and the colors being muted.

Here are some TV setting suggestions that might add some color and light. Every brand and model will be different, and this is for a Sony OLED. But most modern 4K TVs have at least similar settings.

If you're TV supports it, the season will be in Dolby Vision or HDR.

On the brightness settings, I upped the Gamma (mid range light balance) from 0 to 2, the black level from 50 to 54, the black adjust to medium, the advance contrast enhancer to high, and peak luminance to high. Now you can make out the details of Spacedock.

On color, I adjusted it from 50 to 70. This will make skin tones look a little flush, but you can now see the different uniform colors, the neon lights on M'Talas Prime, and the different color glasses in LA Ten Forward.

If you have a Samsung, LG, Vizio, or other common brand, maybe try adjusting your settings and replying to the post with what you found worked for you.

 

[Serveaux]

Or they could just, you know have lit the thing well.

 

[Beyerstein]

i've never seen a show or movie lit this dark.

 

[cal888]

Over on Reddit people are saying there are noticeable differences in the P+ vs Prime versions. I think P+'s Dolby Vision encoding must be mis-calibrated or something.

 

[Awesome Possum]

Looks fine to me.

 

[gvn2fly]

Over on Reddit people are saying there are noticeable differences in the P+ vs Prime versions. I think P+'s Dolby Vision encoding must be mis-calibrated or something.

I noticed this too later in the week, but in my case the Prime version looked worse..like desaturated

 

[Mark Boeder]

I watch via the Paramount+ app. Watched the episode twice on my Amazon Fire HD tablet and it looked fine. Went to watch it via my AppleTV 4k to my Panasonic 1080p plasma, and it looked dim and washed out. Glad I'm not the only one to notice this.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

Gotta confession, I have not been watching valid copies of the Star Trek shows. However, around the holidays they had a really good offer on a year of P+ so I took the plunge for a year. What a piece of shit app! It sucks on LG, it won't even play on Firestick, it sucks on Chromecast, it just sucks unbelievably. The only way I have found to get HDR is to launch the app on my iPhone and play it on my TV via Airplay which is not exactly ideal.

 

[Serveaux]

i've never seen a show or movie lit this dark.

I watched the Shaw/bridge clip on YouTube this afternoon and it's fucking ridiculous. Trek must be the only show in the world where the producers think the viewership would rather look at lights on the wall than at the faces of the characters.

 

[gvn2fly]

Terry matalas said it doesn’t look right for him either and is looking into it. Sounds like it’s a paramount plus issue with some platforms. Someone who did vfx for the show also tweeted at paramount that the saturation wasn’t right.

 

[valkyrie013]

Noticed it this episode..
Everything was washed out bright. . then I watch ready room on utube and it's not washed out.

Yeah P+ app is horrible. I'm on the app on Xbox on a very nice LG tv.

 

[ananta]

It’s by far the worst cinematography I’ve ever seen on Trek (not sure if it’s still called ’cinematography’ when it’s referring to a TV production). Far too dark and saturated. I had to increase the brightness on my tv and that unfortunately makes the blacks grey. You should not have to mess around with your Tv settings just to make something halfway watchable. Heads should roll over this.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I'm just glad it wasn't just me that noticed how dark and faded things were. For a moment, I thought my monitor might be slowly dying or whatever.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I assume it's a show made to look grand on those ultra-expensive TVs with 5000 shades of black

 

[ananta]

I speak as someone who loved the look of Generations; while the sets were darkened it was balanced by strong, vivid light and the result was quite beautiful. Picard just looks murky.

 

[Caeruleus]

Illumination of Enterprise-D interior in Star Trek Generations movie was amazing. Nothing looked so cheap as it looked in TNG series.

 

[Mr. Adventure]

I assume it's a show made to look grand on those ultra-expensive TVs with 5000 shades of black

I have a pretty decent OLED and even when I could get it to actually use HDR color it was still really faded and lifeless though at least watchable. The alternative seemed to be the crappy SD picture with the blown out color.

 

[fireproof78]

Heads should roll over this.

The executions will be aired on all channels.

 

[Tuskin38]

Terry says on twitter that the saturation issue should be fixed.

 

[Ronald Held]

Too optically dark. Is this an indicator of the tone for this season?