Were they shot in 4k or something we just didn’t have TV’s that could see 4k back in the day?
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They were shot on film. Film does not have pixels. Film is basically a load of chemicals which react with light to change colour, creating an image. 35mm and 70mm film, which major Hollywood movies are usually shot on, have plenty of detail in them for a 4k transfer. And if you saw them in cinemas, you’d be seeing that detail. But televisions, as well as distribution means like UHD Blu-Rays and streaming, have only recently gotten to the point where they can show this much detail.
TV shows, meanwhile, were a mixed bag. Some shows were shot on 16mm film, which has enough detail for an HD release, which is why shows like the original Star Trek could get a full HD remaster by going to the original film and rescanning it in HD. (Edit: Okay, apparently Star Trek was 35mm, as were a lot of American shows. Even better. I don’t know much about American TV or Star Trek, hence my ignorance.) But other shows were shot on video tape, which only records at standard definition, like what a TV at the time could show.
A lot of old TV shows (Certainly in Britain, I dunno about other countries) were shot with a mixture of tape and film. They’d use video tape in the studio and film on location or for complicated effects shots. (Video tape was much cheaper than film, but was impractical to use outside the studio, hence the mix). So Blu-Ray releases of old shows that used this are often a mix of quality. Buy any of the early 80s of Doctor Who or Only Fools and Horses on Blu-Ray, and you’ll see that everything shot on location is way higher quality than the stuff in the studio. That’s because the location work is on high-detail film, but the studio stuff is on low-detail video tape.
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