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Comment by nirvdrum | Hacker News Reader

I dropped Netflix about a year ago in no small part because any show with dark scenes (e.g., "Stranger Things") look like a blocky mess in HD. For a while, I thought somehow my network was at fault, but I don't have the issue with other services. When I looked into it, it seems Netflix's HD compression is bad on OLED displays and the "solution" is to pay them a premium to get 4K streams. Meanwhile, the other providers include 4K in their base offering and things generally look great.

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That is not surprising. If you aren't paying for the highest bitrate stream then it's not a fair comparison. HBO Max's highest bitrate is far more like Netflix's mid-tier option. What's weird is that movies that were released on HBO Max like Dune are in great quality and a much higher bitrate.

TBH it's a bit strange to pay the premium for an OLED but then not be willing to pay for the highest bitrate. The fact that it's called 4K and it's technically in 4K is a bit misleading. Plus having Dolby Vision will make a huge difference when watching on an OLED.

I'm not sure what's unfair about the comparison. No other 1080p source I've tried has this problem. OTA TV, HDHomeRun, Plex, Hulu, Disney+, Amazon, Apple TV+, Vudu, HBO Now -> Max, video game consoles, Blu-ray, and some others. I don't care too much about what the underlying bitrate is. I have a 350 Mbps connection and expect the stream to eventually settle on something high quality. Netflix's HD plan is more expensive than any of the others'. For that, I'd expect the stream to not suck. Some of those services do stream content in 4K and I agree that's not a fair comparison, but they do have HD content and they don't upcharge for the 4K stuff.

Keep in mind, it's not like it's Netflix alerted me to a problem. I've used the LG built-in app, so they know what TV I have. I just had shows with crappy scenes for a long time.

The 4k subscription is easy to share with friends/family and looks great on OLED. Getting a group together to split subscriptions is something that really wasn't possible with cable but greatly increases the value of these services.

How would the compression change for OLED vs standard LCD etc? I guess it could be generally bad but only noticeable on a OLED?

OLEDs can display true black whereas standard LCDs cannot. If the black regions are compressed and blacks become something close to black, but not quite, it looks bad on an OLED as that region is illuminated. Netflix appears to compress blacks very heavily, so you end up with large rectangles of slightly different dark shades, none of which are really black.

I'm not an expert on panel technology, but I think because LCDs have a backlight, the issue isn't as pronounced there. It just kinda washes out.

I've also seen this issue on regular LCD TVs with HD streams. It can get really pronounced in scenes with slow camera movement where a static dark background turns into a blocky, jumpy mess of compression artifacts.

I want to trust that the codecs know that it's hard to see dark, so I wonder if the displays are being calibrated incorrectly, maybe to pump up the brightness for the showroom.

Fortunately, Netflix is the only service exhibiting this issue. Blu-rays look great in 1080p and UHD. Other streaming services look good as well. I've also tried Netflix on multiple devices connected to the TV. In all cases, the Netflix HD stream is distractingly blocky during dark scenes.

My best guess is their choice of codec and compression settings predate OLED availability and they don't want to re-encode and just expect people to upgrade to their 4K plan. I've never had their 4K plan, so I can't say whether that truly addresses the problem.

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