Blocky and Pixelated Dark Scenes when watching videos (Netflix/Youtube/Movies)

I am having the same problem. I bought a new MacBook Pro about a month ago to replace my old one (from 2015), and I am also having issues with pixelated dark scenes. This never happened to me on my old laptop, nor does it on my iPad. To be perfectly honest I am rather annoyed about this, and the link in this answer is completely unhelpful.

So, I was screwing around with settings and found that if you go to system preferences>Displays>Display>Toggle off Automatically adjust brightness, and toggle off True Tone, Then click Night Shift and try turning that off. This seemed to significantly clear that horrible pixelated blotchyness.

Hello

Welcome to Apple Support Communities!

I understand from your post that while watching videos on your MacBook dark scenes are pixelated. I am happy to help.

Take a look at the article below for help watching videos on your MacBook.

If you can't stream or watch video content from the iTunes Store or third-party apps

Let me know if you have any questions.

Have a great day!

I've got this, too. I just bought this thing last summer, and it's infuriating that the picture is so terrible, since watching vids is about half of what I use it for.

I've tried all of the options listed below,

• System Preferences-->Displays-->Color-->Color LCD.
• System Preferences>Displays>Display>Toggle off Automatically adjust brightness, and toggle off True Tone, Then click Night Shift and try turning that off.

I've done all of these things, and none of it helps.

I'm betting it's a processing or rendering problem, because when I do a screen cap, it comes out just as clean as you please.

I also notice this issue doesn't show up on a movie I just watched on iTunes. Hmm.....

I've also noticed that it cleans up a little bit when I jiggle my mouse, or otherwise interact with the computer while the vid is playing. It's almost like it waits until it thinks you're not paying attention, and then starts truncating the image quality.

The article linked below by chris_g1 Community Specialist is completely useless. As far as I can tell, I'm the only one on my network, and I'm running ethernet, not wifi, which is supposed to be faster anyway.

Yes! I just realized this right now and compared my 2019 macbook pro 13-inch to my 2015 macbook pro 13-inch and it looks much worse. I'm not sure why...You can see the difference in the attached image.

Hi,

I have the exactly the same thing on both of my Macs (2014 Mac mini running Catalina and a 2019 MacBook Air running Mojave). Video playback in iTunes/Apple TV is blocky and pixelated in any dark areas of the screen. The same is true watching YouTube videos on both Safari and Chrome. In comparison, both my iPhone and iPad display the content fine.

As an example, I've attached screenshots of a scene from the film Dunkirk. Image 1 is from my iPad and looks like it should do. Image 2 is from the MacBook Air and the footage is a mess.

1)

2)

It’s really annoying and I suspect if it was the other way round, with the iOS version displaying video poorly, it would get a fix much more quickly (seeing as this looks to have been going on for many months now based on the dates of other commenters).

I am also experiencing this problem. Here's a screenshot of the video pixelating:

They restart and ran diagnostics on my MBP 2019 13" when I brought it in. Those came back ok. They said it may be a compression or buffering issue. Anyone figured out how to get good quality picture when playing videos?

I’ve done a bit more testing and it looks to be an issue with streaming content. The following photo has a downloaded version of the film on the left and a streamed version of it on the right (both from iTunes). You can clearly see that the downloaded version is far better (and I have a good internet connection).

I’ve also encountered similar issues when viewing video fromYouTube in both Safari and Chrome.

That’s interesting as mine doesn’t seem to improve when I move the cursor. Although, I have had an issue on my Mac Mini running Catalina where the playback goes all green when you leave the cursor alone (then becomes fine when you move it around). There’s a work around with changing cursor size in accessibility settings for that one so it might help you (screenshot of the instructions is below)

I'm having the exact same problem. Could not believe my brand new MacBook Pro looks all choppy and pixelated in all dark scenes, whether it streaming or downloaded. I did the side by side comparison to my current iPad Pro and the iPad looks crystal clear.

I'm having the exact same problem with my Macbook Pro 2018. I always thought that it's just Netflix or the Wifi-Connection but found out that on my friends 2015 Macbook Pro everything just looks fine.

And yes, the link above is really not helpful.

Thanks for the update! I tried doing that, but you can still see the pixelation, but it does seem a little better. With my googling, i think the problem is called color banding, but I don't know enough about graphics to understand if it's a problem that can be fixed or if it's because of the graphics card used in the machine. I was planning to call Apple to complain and see if they can fix it, but I haven't had the time/wanted to. I'm just ****** that it seems my more expensive laptop looks worse than my old one!

Hi

I have been having the same issue when watching Netflix or Prime on Safari.

I have a late 2016 MacBook Pro (13-inch), and have had this issue since I bought the MacBook at the end of 2016.

It used to not happen when streaming on Firefox, but I have now been having the problem on Firefox as well.

Does anyone know whether this is a software or hardware issue?

System Preferences-->Displays-->Color-->Color LCD.

That fixed the problem on my MacBook Pro. Try opening a video that you're having the problem with and cycle through different color display profiles.

I posted a comment as a direct reply to Chris_g1 above, but it lands at the bottom, not associated with the comment I'm replying to, so I wanted to delete it. Is there seriously no way to delete a comment?