And video quality. Watching some historical videos from my childhood, like tv shows on youtube.... the quality is pure potato. Either the archiving is terrible, or we just accepted much worse quality back then.
this post was submitted on 03 Aug 2023
524 points (95.8% liked)
Showerthoughts
29678 readers
1269 users here now
A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. A showerthought should offer a unique perspective on an ordinary part of life.
Rules
- All posts must be showerthoughts
- The entire showerthought must be in the title
- Avoid politics
- NEW RULE as of 5 Nov 2024, trying it out
- Political posts often end up being circle jerks (not offering unique perspective) or enflaming (too much work for mods).
- Try c/politicaldiscussion, volunteer as a mod here, or start your own community.
- Posts must be original/unique
- Adhere to Lemmy's Code of Conduct-----
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
People always said that Betamax was better quality than VHS. What never gets mentioned is that regular consumer TVs at the time weren't capable of displaying the difference in quality. To the average person they were the same.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/hGVVAQVdEOs
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
You kinda can tell though. CRTs didn’t really use pixels, so it’s not like watching on today’s video equipment though
CRT screens definitely used pixels, but they updated on the horizontal line rather than per pixel. This is why earlier flatscreen LCDs were worse than CRTs in a lot of ways as they had much more motion blur as stuff like "sample and hold" meant that each pixel wasn't updated every frame if the colour info didn't change. CRTs gave you a fresh image each frame regardless.
load more comments
(4 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
load more comments
(3 replies)
There's a lot of archival video that is just terrible. Digital video compression issues have damaged a lot of old footage that's gotten shared over the years, especially YouTube's encoders. They will just straight up murder videos to save bandwidth. There's also a lot of stuff that just doesn't look great when it's being upscaled from magnetic media that's 240x320 at best.
However, there's also a lot of stuff that was bad to begin with and just took advantage of things like scanlines and dithering to make up for poor video quality. Take old games for example. There's a lot of developers who took advantage of CRT TVs to create shading, smoothing, and the illusion of a higher resolution that a console just wasn't capable of. There's a lot of contention in the retro gaming community over whether games looked better with scanlines or if they look better now without them.
Personally, I prefer them without. I like the crisp pixelly edges, but I was also lucky enough to play most of my games on a high quality monitor instead of a TV back then. Then emulators, upscaling, and pixel smoothing became a thing...
load more comments
(1 replies)
It was filmed with poor quality and the films can degrade overtime. It was archived that way because the source was 💩
I watch a lot of hockey. Just watching hockey games from the 2000s are full on potato. I don't remember them looking that bad back then.
load more comments
(2 replies)
pure potato
Lol
load more comments
(2 replies)
I do by audio quality. We currently live in the age of badly understandable dialogues.
I noticed when watching Good Omens on Amazon Prime that they offer a language option "Original + Dialogue Boost".
It works wonders. Almost feels like back in the days again when TV shows wanted dialogue to be understood.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I think most people have given up and use subtitles on all the time.
This is actually because our microphones became better
Sure, microphones got better but there is more too it. One huge factor is the mixing for cinemas and not for home theaters or worse for TV speaker.
No, the video actually goes into that. Directors think it's "more real" to have mumbled dialogues. But they seem to misinterpret that as "more mumble = more good".
load more comments
(1 replies)
This video was exactly what first came to mind when I read "badly understandable dialogues"! It bothers me that as we got better mics, the actors became more unintelligible instead of the other way as one would predict.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=VYJtb2YXae8
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
Does anyone actually randomly send you nude girls? Genuinely curious
No. Doesn't look like it.
It's just as well. Where would you even put them all?
load more comments
(2 replies)
... or how blurry the image is (SD vs HD).
You mean 4k vs HD, right?
Radio vs TV for Boomers
B&W vs Color for Gen X
SD vs HD would be Millenials
4K vs HD for Zoomers
load more comments
(5 replies)
load more comments
(2 replies)
When I was a kid I used to think black and white meant the TV show or whatever used to be in color but since it got old it turned black and white. My thought process was they changed color just like old people's hair turns grey... This was 35 years ago before internet.
load more comments
(3 replies)
Even early 16:9 stuff looks pretty dated now if it hasn't been remastered to 1080/4k.
Laughs in Australian 576i free-to-air TV
The real differentiator is pacing and editing.
Especially in action scenes. I used to watch Hawaii five O the 2010 version and sometimes a chanal showed the old version with the same name, the are so incredibly different in pacing and the amount of violence. I really liked the old one in that regard, much less shooting and blood.
I sometimes watch old movies and it gets infuriating how long they talk around the same fact that everyone already agrees on. Yes, he was killed with a knife because it's still stuck in his head, now move on!
load more comments
(1 replies)
It's not so back and white anymore, is it
Re-watching Buffy the Vampire Slayer with my kids in new hi-def, and you can clearly and easily see the stunt doubles now, and the SFX look really dated now that you can see them clearly.
It's amazing what old CRTs would let you get away with.
It's not so much what they got away with but working with the tools they had. It is the same for pixel art in the early gen consoles.
load more comments
(1 replies)
Lotta old shows are re-formated just to have the wider screen, since they would still film at higher res for movies or just because. It's not just an indication of age if something is still only in 4:3, it's an indication of thrift or just a general lack of giving a shit about the future.
load more comments
(2 replies)
Also the quality of the show go watch old Thomas the Tank Engine and compare it to the new one
Can always tell when a show is 4:3 aspect. Recently I've noticed some modern TV shows adopting the theater aspects of flat (1.85:1) or scope (2.4:1) which I think is pretty cool. The last episode of Strange New Worlds I watched was in scope, that's some high end filming.
load more comments
(1 replies)
I identified them by awkward haircuts and clothing styles. I knew something was off / wrong, but it wasn't until adulthood that I was able to piece it together.
I have a relative who says their children won't watch 2D animated features because they are old
They still make 2D cartoons
I think the distinction might be film versus series. Most movies are that bubbly CGI look but the streaming shows are mostly still 2D.
Asteroid City switched between aspect ratios as well as switching between black&white as they swapped between the TV story and the 'real'/cinema story.
load more comments
(2 replies)
view more: next ›