How can movies from 70s be remastered in 4K, but not sports games?

Question

For example, they remastered Taxi Driver from 1976 to 4K Quality, but they can’t remaster Lakers vs Celtics from the 80s?

In: Technology

Answer 1

Movies (pre 2000) are shot on film and depending on the film grain quality you can go back to the original film which has been carefully retained and remaster it to 4k.

Sports games (Pre 2000) are transmitted straight to video (VT) as so were only ever recorded at NTSC, PAL or SECAM quality – also in most cases video archives (Pre 2000) have been digitized over the last 20 years and the originals destroyed.