Is the digital quality really that much better now?
In: 16
Considering you would probably mostly be seeing 480 and 720 videos in 2012, keep in mind that 4K has 20 times as many pixels as 480. So yes, everything has improved. The cameras, the screens.
Because content was made with the available technology in mind. For example, [old video game art](https://www.reddit.com/r/FinalFantasyVII/comments/q3yp85/left_side_is_what_it_looked_like_on_a_crt_tv_no/) looked way better on old CRT screens than they do on modern ones.
Conversely, modern content is made with the assumption that modern screens can show more detail.
One other interesting piece, especially related to old sports clips, is that what was transmitted in real time over radio waves or even early forms of cable internet was at a much high bandwidth and resolution than what was being recorded, both due to recording technology and even more importantly storage concerns (especially for anything recorded at home via something like a VCR recorder).
There are old sport clips that are completely unwatchable unless you know what is roughly happening in the clip already, but weren’t nearly that bad to watch in real time. It’s just the bad copy is the only thing that got recorded (or that is the only recording that made it to something like YouTube because NBC or whoever doesn’t have incentive to load their more pristine recording archive to YouTube if it even still exists on tape somewhere).
10 years ago? I don’t think TV (at least big budget shows) has changed all that much. Like the first season of Game of Thrones was 11 years ago and the VFX all holds up.
What maybe is happening is a mix of the TV shows you are streaming or downloading today are at a higher bitrate (so look much better) than what you downloaded 10 years ago and rewatched recently, more shows being released at 4k now which gives them that extra sharpness, and extremely high quality digital video cameras being so widespread that low budget productive and even YouTube videos today look as good as high budget productions from 10 years ago.
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