Why old Black & White films and TV seem to have better picture resolution than stuff filmed in the 80s and 90s?
In: 179
Because (some of) the stuff in the 80s and 90s wasn’t actually filmed. It was taped. There’s a difference. (Counterexample, StarTrek TNG was filmed, and so you can watch it in near 4K)
Film is the analogue process of using tiny silver crystals to make images, and then showing you those images one after the other. The limiting factor in film is the physical size of silver crystals. (And they are very small)
Tape is more complicated than that, but it uses a magnetic strip and magnetizes it according to the image that is captured by the camera. That magnetization was only so granular, and so, you ended up with a maximum picture quality based on the standard at the time, or “standard definition”. Which worked when you only had 480p displays, but looks extra bad now.
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