Why does my Blu-Ray picture go grainy when the scene is dark?

[TVguy]

two possible causes

a) The contrast on your TV is actaully not that good, so the TV can't display true blacks - there is nothing you can do; quite common on LCDs.


b) (Most Likely). Your TV has an automatic contrast option turned on.
(Sometimes called Dynamic contrast) It usually works, but in some cases it fails and you see noise. Try to turn it off and see if it helps.

In both cases you can try to turn brightness a bit down - to create better blacks.

 

[DeEeTe]

I know it's probably a setting issue, but ... We have a PS3 connected to our LCD TV through an HDMI cable. The games are crystal clear. Blu-Rays are usually clear (especially when the picture is bright and colorful). The problem I'm having is that the picture gets incredibly grainy when the scene is dark or shadowy. Our TV has several pre-set formats (such as "movies," "games," "sports") and it seems to have that problem on all of them. Does anyone have any idea what I can adjust?

 

[jamesc]

The TV settings should not affect this, have you tested this on several different films? Is it a film you are watching now? What was it shot on? As I don't know how grainy you mean or what the grain looks like I'll just put this out there but are you sure it's not just the grain from the film stock? You probably wouldn't notice it in light scenes because of the detail in the image and because you would recognise and perceive shapes and objects and not notice the grains but on a black screen in high definition you might be noticing the naturally produced grains in the film stock.

If you don't think that's it, could you describe the grains more? How big? Are they unifrom? What kind of shape? Like grainy as in sand, as in tiny tiny dots or grainy as in a general term for unidentified odd shapes on screen?

 

[XavierVega]

Try making your own setting, raising the color if it's below 70 put it at 80 or so and change the contrast and brightness, it will probably help. Remember though that blu-ray is very detailed picture wise, and that when you see a movie in theaters that graininess is present, so it would only be even more prominent when it's compacted onto a smaller screen. Good Luck