Xbox Series X games cracking, bright colors and growing black boxes

HoldfastTitan · Aug 8, 2023

I bought a brand new Xbox Series X (Diablo IV edition) about two months ago. Everything was fine for about a month and a half, but then the picture began to become distorted. Three things began to happen when I played games only:

1. Picture began to have sharp lines flash as if the screen was cracking.

2. Colors in the game would become overly bright. The colors would be mostly reds but greens and blues were also shown. One color each time just very, very bright wherever it was on the game would be lit up.

3. A black box would form and if I moved it would grow in the opposite direction of where I was moving until it would fill the TV screen.

I thought it was my TV. I replaced it with a Samsung q70c which was shown beside the same console in the store and said to be an "ultimate gaming machine." Didn't stop the issue.

I changed the settings. I enabled HDR. I took it out of HDR. I put the TV in game mode and out of game mode. I enabled 4K, HDR10, 50Hz, auto low-latency mode, variable refresh rate, and YCC 4:2:2. I turned on 4K mode on my TV. None of these worked to any degree.

I changed the HDMI cables given by Xbox. Nothing changed. I moved the HDMI cable into different ports on my TV including the gaming HDMI port. Nothing.

I'm at my wit's end. Everything else works fine. Hulu, Disney Plus, and Netflix all work without issues and show none of the picture quality problems I am having. It is just happening on games that have been downloaded to my Xbox Series X both new Series X and remastered games that I had on my Xbox One.

Is my Xbox already fried?

:)

Obsessive Power

Hi,

I'm really sorry to tell you that what you're experiencing with your console is a classic sign of a failed APU (Advanced Processing Unt). The APU is the CPU and graphics hardware of your console. Strange colours, odd looking textures, additional textures that shouldn't be there, weird, spiky graphics are all signs of this type of failure.

These issues may not manifest when on the dashboard or playing videos as the APU is not being fully utilised when performing these tasks.

I'm afraid you'll need to reach out to Microsoft and arrange a repair.

https://support.xbox.com/help/hardware-network/warranty-service/getting-your-product-serviced

Joeysly

Hi there...was this issue resolved by you or did you have to send your Xbox in for repair? Of you did send it back to Microsoft did they fix your current console or provide a new console?

I am having the exact same issue. I hope your problem was promptly resolved!

Ghost of Kirin

The Reference Level set at 'Expanded' setting is only on your Xbox, not your TV.

For your TV/Monitor, I would suggest leaving the TV's Black Levels at Low because at a High setting, if set incorrectly, it gives a murky filter to the overall picture quality, even though it is at times able to bring out certain black levels which are otherwise
unnoticeable, like in the Xbox's DVD player functionality.

Use Battlefield: Bad Company 2's 'Default' settings to adjust your brightness levels. Since the game's video settings are extremely close to the basic brightness settings set on a professionally calibrated TV.

So make sure that Battlefield 2's video settings are set to 'Default' and do the following, but only with your LG TV's Brightness and Contrast settings.
NOT the game's settings. So do not touch the in-game settings at all.

Adjust the brightness setting on your TV so that the first box is black, and the box next to black is only just noticeable, it should be an extremely dark gray in color.

Next adjust the contrast settings of your TV until the farthest right White box is white (at the top row), and the box next to the White is just noticeable but extremely light grey in color. Make sure that these boxes do not alter in color when adjusting your
TV's contrast levels, if they do change in light tones of either pink or green or blue and yellow, then that would mean that your contrast settings are set too high.

At the top there are two big boxes with smaller boxes inside each one of them. Use this to guide you. The gray box inside the white should be neutral and very light gray in color. The black box with the dark gray box inside of it should be extremely dark, but
you should be able to see a very small difference between the big black box and the smaller gray box.

So to go over the above steps again. Set the game's video setting to default, then adjust only using your TV/Monitor's brightness and contrast settings.
Turn off every setting on your TV such as Fresh Contrast, Noise reduction, and other useless settings on your TV for better picture quality. You can leave Real Cinema on though, which will help with the frame rate consistency a bit.

I Sh00t Back x

Im a fan of blues and greens mixed in with some black. I like bright colors so the black will make it pop

Fear2Eternity

The 360 has had a lot of colors so far.

I thin the X box one has only had black and the titanfall themed controller.

Xbox Series X games cracking, bright colors and growing black boxes