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

Hollywood movies from that era were shot on actual film, which has super-high fidelity and resolution. In essence, the clarity of the finished product was limited by the projection technology at the time rather than the actual media it was captured on. Television broadcasts, on the other hand, were shot on magnetic tape that didn’t have as high fidelity or resolution, since it was a lot cheaper than actual film, and TVs at the time were limited to 320p or 480p resolution anyway so there just wasn’t a need for higher resolution.