Snow/noise artifacts unavoidable?

[brassplyer]

I notice that there are certain areas in an image that always seem to show "snow" readily - generally darker or lower lit areas of the image. Apparently this is just an unavoidable artifact with even Blu-Ray HD video?

[jagabo]

All film has grain. All digital capture devices have noise.

[sanlyn]

Depends on the video source, the player, the display, etc. Jagabo is correct, there is no "noiseless" video whether film or digital. The fact that you see it more plainly in darker areas has to do with the fact that the noise is brighter than the dark stuff. It's especially true of VHS, which has horrible shadow detail to begin with, and with cheap players/tvs with poor motion handling and inferior shadow rendering. But....what do you mean by "snow"? I see various kinds of noise, but it don't look like snow.