Game of Thrones fans had many issues with the show’s final season, and one of their most vehement critiques involved a technical issue rather than a plot concern: viewers complained that they couldn’t see the action during the Battle of Winterfell, because the episode just “too dark.” Now, more than three years after the episode aired, HBO is offering a new way to stream the show that can help.
HBO Max users worldwide can now enjoy all eight seasons of . stream Game of Thrones in 4K resolution with HDR color – both Dolby Vision and HDR10 – and Dolby Atmos surround sound, HBO announced Monday. These modern video and audio formats represent the top of the line when it comes to the home viewing experience.
House of the Dragonthe first Game of Thrones spin-off series, will also be available to stream in these formats when it premieres Aug. 21, HBO said.
This marks an important milestone for the company. Game of Thrones is the first HBO series to support these advanced formats, and House of the Dragon will be the first to debut with that support. That puts the nearly 50-year-old cable TV network on par with competitors like Netflix, Disney Plus, Amazon Video and Hulu, each of which has been offering programming in 4K HDR for years. (HBO Max started supporting these formats in late 2020 with the premiere of Wonder Woman 1984but until Monday, the service’s 4K catalog was limited to movies, not TV shows — and only about 30 of those.)
There are some caveats here. For starters, only customers who subscribe to HBO Max’s ad-free tier — which costs 50% more than the ad-free version of the service — can stream content in 4K. (This kind of feature gating isn’t exclusive to HBO Max; 4K streaming is only available on the most expensive Netflix plan.)
In addition, while HBO Max is accessible on a wide variety of devices, not all of them support 4K. The HBO Max help site lists the Xbox One S, Xbox One X, Xbox Series S, and Xbox Series X as 4K-compatible platforms, but doesn’t list the PlayStation 4 Pro or PlayStation 5 – which is odd considering the PS5 app is reportedly upgraded with 4K support in mid-June. I have loaded an episode of Game of Thrones on my PS5, and it didn’t seem to play in 4K or HDR10. (Unlike Xbox devices, PlayStation consoles don’t support Dolby Atmos or Dolby Vision.) We’ve asked HBO for clarification, and we’ll update this article with any information we receive.
I cannot emphasize enough how much your ability to watch Game of Thrones in these new formats depends on your setup. The only way I could get the show played in 4K with both Dolby Vision HDR and Dolby Atmos sound was using the HBO Max app on my LG C1 television. When I tried to use the app on my Chromecast with Google TV, I got 4K but in HDR10 instead of Dolby Vision, albeit with Atmos. When I cast HBO Max from my phone to the Chromecast, I got 4K and Dolby Vision, but Dolby Digital Plus sound instead of Atmos. And despite the information on HBO Max’s help site, my Xbox One X’s HBO Max app produced 4K HDR10 video with Dolby Digital Plus. (All of these apps/devices should support 4K, Dolby Vision, and Dolby Atmos.)
Assuming you can stream successfully Game of Thrones in 4K HDR at home, it might be worth loading up “The Long Night” – the infamous episode that was “too dark” – to see if you have a better viewing experience than you did in April 2019. Watch the show now in 4K. HDR via HBO Max is still not the absolute best possible experience; to get that, you need a copy of Game of Thrones on 4K Blu-ray, which would yield higher quality video. But the new streaming option does offer a significant upgrade over the standard HBO Max experience, which is 1080p resolution with Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 audio.
Days after the Game of Thrones finale aired, Polygon published a lengthy article in which I explored why “The Long Night” looked so raw. The statement came down to a confluence of multiple factors, including the filmmakers’ creative vision and how it encountered the limitations of broadcast television and streaming video technology. You can read the story for more – like, a lot more – details, but a major problem was the lack of HDR.
One of the main advantages HDR offers over standard dynamic range is a wider color gamut, which greatly reduces a problem known as banding, where smooth color gradations are broken up into different, well, bands. Indeed, I noticed much less banding (and much less pixelation) when I watched “The Long Night” in 4K Dolby Vision. I still felt like I had to keep the room dark to give myself the best chance of seeing everything, but in this case I could finally make out the action, unhampered by video compression issues.
In the above article, I said that HDR “has the potential to be the most impactful advancement in TV technology since the introduction of HD resolution and digital television into the world.” [2000s]while lamenting that “it has not yet been widely adopted on the content side or the consumer side.” I also said, in a hopeful note in the article’s conclusion, that “a lot can change in a relatively short period of time.” And I’ve mapped out a path forward for HBO:
Now HBO could master its content in 4K HDR, as Netflix does with its live-action originals. That would allow the company to upgrade the existing 1080i version with standard dynamic range of Game of Thrones via the linear HBO television channel and deliver a 4K HDR feed to streaming viewers via HBO Go/Now.
That was the spring of 2019. Now, in the summer of 2022, that’s exactly what HBO will be doing House of the Dragon. The long-awaited future is here.
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