Banding is a picture problem where smooth color transitions look like visible stripes or steps instead of blending naturally.
It often shows up in skies, shadows, or gradients, where you expect a smooth fade from one shade to another. Banding happens when the TV has limited color depth or when the video source is compressed too much.
Viewers may notice banding on low-quality streams or older decoders, especially during sports broadcasts with wide areas of single color like the pitch.
See Also: Bit Depth, Compression, HDR, Upscaling, Color Calibration