why old archive video from the BBC generally looks so good (as opposed to old US based archive video footage)?

Question

Example: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK88CkVCbVg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BK88CkVCbVg)

In: 16

Answer 1

The original resolution of British broadcast video (pre-HD) has 625 lines of resolution vs 525 in the US, so the source is higher quality. The BBC is most likely using surviving broadcast tapes as their source for their online content, and may be upscaling it to push it to 720 or 1080.