I just adjusted the picture settings on my 8 year old plasma and watched it in 720p no worries, yes it was dark but fully watchable. People just want something to whinge about.

This is what happens when people download 300 Mb torrent rips. #burned

This is why I have never taken up streaming services, because the picture quality is terrible, and the compression artefacts glaringly visible. I have a 4K TV, and watch using a blu-ray player with 4 K upscaling. The picture and sound quality are sumptuous. I intend to invest in a 4K player now the 4K discs are much more prevalent. I would rather wait for GoT to come out on disc, than watch a second rate version on streaming services.

I know of 1 person who on social media vocally complained he couldn't see anything because it was to dark. Yeah, the whole movie took place at night, and was filmed entirely at night to catch the darkness of the "Night King". I don't think it was the TVs as much as the people watching. Go outside at night, it's pretty dark, can't see much.

I think Joe Botha has it right. The complainers are the people without HBO who watched a crappy torrent of it. I watched it on my 4K Roku tv, in a dark room, and it was absolutely awesome! Not a single complaint from me.

This about some very bad decisions at the artistic level and lack of testing on a typical views screen.
Dark unwatchable films are absolutely pointless, this is video not an audio only medium. Fabian Wagner needs to get out of the business or learn why this was so frustrating and waste of time for many viewers.
As for the technical aspect - its normally standard practice, or it use to be, to check what the final output looks like on a typical viewers. Clearly this didn't happen or someone has very poor judgement!

I watched it on HBO streaming service, in a dark room with a TV that can handle the dark shading if the content is compressed right. I also do some work in post production and would be fairly certain that the obvious graphical artifacts are from the compression of the video stream. I'm sure they could recompress the video again with better results. This goes to lack of testing, probably based on the requirements of secrecy surrounding the show.

I watched it on an OLED screen/HBO/Cable. In full disclosure, there were lights on in other rooms, so it could have been darker. I had problems watching the episode.
I get that it's dark, and I expected it to be dark, but when they focused on someone, and that person was clearly dying, I couldn't tell if it was someone I cared about.
One could argue the fog of war, and say even that was intentional, but it meant I wasn't as emotionally involved as I could have been. I hope the next episode spends some of its valuable time recounting what I missed, because I imagine some of it was supposed to be meaningful.

Watched it on my 8 year old Sony LCD and it was fine, you just needed to watch it in a dark room. Common sense, really...

It was night. If was winter. That makes things dark. I thought the episode was fine and the darkness enhanced the suspense.