Does legacy TV programme footage deteriorate over time?

[T & P]

I suspect the short, thread-ending answer to my question is ‘false memories and nostalgia’, but I still marvel as how fucking shit professional TV footage from as early as 15 years ago can look now. I’ve spent part of today watching various episodes of Engineering Disasters, which is US centric. We all know their NTSC was pretty inferior poor to Europe’s PAL, but still, a lot of the footage from as recently as 2004 looks like it was shot with a cheap 1980s camcorder.

And even with British programming using the superior-to-America’s PAL set up, the difference in quality when you watch news stuff from as recently as the 90’s or even 2000s is astounding, and far more pronounced than a simple standard vs hi-res comparison. During the recent Euros they were showing plenty of footage of England’s exploits in the Euro 1996 tournament, which I’m sure the BBC would have been keen to film in the highest quality available within their budget. It’s astounding how crap it looks now; same with those Sky Sports Premier League Years documentaries from the early 00’s.

Is it just my rose-tinted view, or could TV footage lose resolution over time? Or perhaps it’s down to the recording medium available at the time?

 

[platinumsage]

Bigger tellies now make old SD footage look worse than when it was viewed on a 21 inch screen from across the room.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I have a suspicion it was always just a bit crap but we watched it on really low-res tellies. Also I expect CRTs are more flattering to footage from that period anyway - pixelation doesn't improve analogue media.

(On the subject of CRTs, it's interesting that old computer games also tend to look better on CRTs or CRT emulators, even though they are digital and pixelated already, because the graphics were designed for CRTs and often rely on certain aspects of their behaviour, rather than each pixel being a flat block of colour.)

 

[cupid_stunt]

It’s astounding how crap it looks now; same with those Sky Sports Premier League Years documentaries from the early 00’s.

Try GB News.

 

[T & P]

Bigger tellies now make old SD footage look worse than when it was viewed on a 21 inch screen from across the room.

Yes, that undoubtedly contributes, but bigger budget theatre-release films from even the 1960s still look sufficiently sharp and clear today. Of course I know that the camera equipment, film stock and aspect ratio of cinematic movies would have been far superior than that used by current affairs broadcasters, but I reckon that only goes so far, and plenty of lower budget movies from decades past also look pretty decent on a modern screen.

And more tellingly, humble British TV sitcoms from the 70s, which I doubt were filmed with cinematic-grade gear, can still look clearer than TV more recent TV news reports.

 

[platinumsage]

Yes, that undoubtedly contributes, but bigger budget theatre-release films from even the 1960s still look sufficiently sharp and clear today. Of course I know that the camera equipment, film stock and aspect ratio of cinematic movies would have been far superior than that used by current affairs broadcasters, but I reckon that only goes so far, considering that lower budget movies from decades past also look pretty decent on a modern screen.

And more tellingly, humble British TV sitcoms from the 70s, which I doubt were filmed with cinematic-grade gear, can still look clearer than TV more recent TV news reports.

Quite often old stuff will be remastered. Take Friends for example, now shown in HD thanks to rescanning the 35mm it was originally filmed on. I don’t know about most 70s shows but Dad’s Army was shot on 16mm, and I’d imagine that would have similarly benefited.

I imagine news reports just ended up being archived in whatever minimum quality was deemed suitable for transmission to everyone’s CRT boxes.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

35mm is actually pretty high resolution, at least for video. I don't shoot movies on film, but I shoot a lot of stills on film, and even with the ~ half frame that movie frames were shot on combined with my consumer flatbed scanner I can get pretty decent image sizes. Theoretically you can get up to around 12MP with the highest quality film and the best scanners, but even 3 or 4 is fine for a video frame. This is only going to get better with AI image upscalers, too.

 

[Reno]

Yes, that undoubtedly contributes, but bigger budget theatre-release films from even the 1960s still look sufficiently sharp and clear today. Of course I know that the camera equipment, film stock and aspect ratio of cinematic movies would have been far superior than that used by current affairs broadcasters, but I reckon that only goes so far, and plenty of lower budget movies from decades past also look pretty decent on a modern screen.

And more tellingly, humble British TV sitcoms from the 70s, which I doubt were filmed with cinematic-grade gear, can still look clearer than TV more recent TV news reports.

As long as something was shot and edited on 35mm film, even in the 1930s, it will look as good as as modern HD. Budget has nothing to do with it, as long as there was enough money to afford 35mm film stock, it will look sharp on a modern HD TV, there wasn't a poor quality of 35mm film for low budget films. I have plenty of old horror and exploitation films on Blu-ray which look as sharp as any modern film. The difference has entirely to do with many old tv shows being shot and/or edited on SD tape. Until the mid to late noughts, tape was SD, fine for your cathode ray telly but not for HD presentation, so now it looks crap.

British sitcoms where usually shot on tape for indoors and on film for location shoots, many drama series too. There were exceptions, The Avengers was show on film from the Emmy Peel seasons onwards and the show looks pin sharp in HD.

 

[8ball]

I have a suspicion it was always just a bit crap but we watched it on really low-res tellies. Also I expect CRTs are more flattering to footage from that period anyway - pixelation doesn't improve analogue media.

(On the subject of CRTs, it's interesting that old computer games also tend to look better on CRTs or CRT emulators, even though they are digital and pixelated already, because the graphics were designed for CRTs and often rely on certain aspects of their behaviour, rather than each pixel being a flat block of colour.)

Yeah, partly down to memory and expectation, and partly down to the gentle hardware anti-aliasing effect of the electron gun.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

I've shot Kodak Double-X (Eastman 5222) which is a classic movie stock that I believe hasn't changed formulation since 1959 - and precursors were around since the 30s, just not as sensitive so needing more light. It's really frickin sharp stuff. It needs some careful metering sometimes but obviously you have that in professional movie studios.

eta: I posted some from an XR march on Urban a couple of years ago - Extinction Rebellion - those are reduced size as well, plus shot by me on the move trying to manually focus with a Leica (though the originals were full rather than half frame).