Even at the time on an ordinary TV, I could see that Star Trek: The Next Generation had lousy picture quality.
Apparently older US shows were completely shot and edited on film, which explains why the quality visibly went down in the late 80s when they switched to editing on video. (I didn't know this was the reason at the time, but I could sure as heck see it).
Yeah, well the UK market is much smaller than the US, so the budgetary constraints are forgiveable.
And as mentioned above the US shows may have been shot on high-quality film, but later ones were ruined by editing on atrocious quality NTSC video which sucked even then.
That's true... *but* you're missing one major issue.
Just because film itself was capable of recording that much detail, doesn't mean the shows themselves were produced with it in mind. (*)
TV has always had a relatively limited budget compared to film, and I guarantee that they weren't going to waste any of it on set, costume or make-up detail that wasn't going to show up on viewers sets (receiving ropey quality 525-line transmissions) back then.
There was a recent story about EastEnders having to upgrade their film set because the flaws were more obvious in HD. There are similar stories about presenters' makeup.
In short, even though you *can* view old shot-and-edited-on-film shows at high resolution, you might just end up seeing how badly glued on the Starship Enterprise's buttons are, or how dodgy someone's caked-on makeup looks... all details that you weren't originally meant to see because it wasn't shot with that in mind.
(*) Given that they thought the godawful soft picture quality of edited-on-video US shows was acceptable- I thought they looked obviously crap even back then- they very probably didn't.
Apparently older US shows were completely shot and edited on film, which explains why the quality visibly went down in the late 80s when they switched to editing on video. (I didn't know this was the reason at the time, but I could sure as heck see it).
Yeah, well the UK market is much smaller than the US, so the budgetary constraints are forgiveable.
And as mentioned above the US shows may have been shot on high-quality film, but later ones were ruined by editing on atrocious quality NTSC video which sucked even then.
That's true... *but* you're missing one major issue.
Just because film itself was capable of recording that much detail, doesn't mean the shows themselves were produced with it in mind. (*)
TV has always had a relatively limited budget compared to film, and I guarantee that they weren't going to waste any of it on set, costume or make-up detail that wasn't going to show up on viewers sets (receiving ropey quality 525-line transmissions) back then.
There was a recent story about EastEnders having to upgrade their film set because the flaws were more obvious in HD. There are similar stories about presenters' makeup.
In short, even though you *can* view old shot-and-edited-on-film shows at high resolution, you might just end up seeing how badly glued on the Starship Enterprise's buttons are, or how dodgy someone's caked-on makeup looks... all details that you weren't originally meant to see because it wasn't shot with that in mind.
(*) Given that they thought the godawful soft picture quality of edited-on-video US shows was acceptable- I thought they looked obviously crap even back then- they very probably didn't.
