That said, as I mentioned on this week's podcast, this is going to play out as follows: Google will release a patch restoring a more saturated default color setting (as opposed to sRGB), people will think it's a «display fix» update, and will forget about the other issues like blue color shift and
shadow detail crushing.
Not exact matches
Dynamic range is excellent and
shadow detail robust with no apparent
crushing of black levels, and the presentation is richly
detailed.
Some scenes are quite dark and muddy, again mostly intentionally, although I think Arrow pushes the black level a bit too far into
crush territory, which has a negative effect on
shadow detail.
Transferred at 1.82:1 and enhanced for 16x9 displays, the theatrical version looks sensational, although it wants for more
detailed shadows; perhaps blacks were
crushed on purpose, as the image in and of itself has enough surface clarity to betray substantial — if unobjectionable — grain.
Black
crush too often washes out
shadow detail, and inconsistent contrast wreaks havoc on color tone and definition.
Built - in
crush is apparent, but
shadow detail is much more satisfactory, as are brightness and contrast levels.
Although it looks a little digitized and
shadow detail occasionally suffers from black
crush, colours (blood reds and blue summer skies) are so vibrant as to lend the film a fitting pop - art flavour.
It's a dark film, and the black levels and
shadow detail reflect that, the latter never being immensely impressive because of the built - in
crush.
It manages to produce its deep blacks without
crushing out as much
shadow detail as the vast majority of other LCD TVs, too.
Unlike most other phone cameras, the Pixel 2 XL rarely delivers blown out highlights or
crushed shadows; instead, you get the perfect amount of
detail in both situations.
Black level boosting and stretching options can make dark parts of the picture look blacker, but
crush much of the subtle
shadow detailing that makes dark areas look convincing.
Black level performance is predictably superb, although there is some low level clipping, with blacks
crushing out near - black
shadow detail.
And there's only so much you can do to try and «bridge the gap» between the Standard and Cinema settings thanks to a combination of each HDR setting setting the OLED brightness option to Max and the other brightness adjustment only permitting quite limited adjustment without severely
crushing out
shadow detail or drastically reducing black level response.
And while the image is able to get inky black, it does so at the peril of
shadow detail, which is
crushed quickly into a flattened void.