Early 2000s TV video quality was mostly poor

This has coincided with an even more dramatic decline in viewership, with general-interest cable networks and several of the more established niche networks losing over half of their viewing audiences in the same period; David Bauder of the Associated Press noted that the corresponding declines in viewership and original programming were triggering a vicious cycle, and that by the mid-2020s, cable television had lost its ability to create "appointment television" events, instead relying on "ghost" programming such as low-quality, low-cost reality fare and reruns. By 2024, only three cable series –Yellowstone, Hallmark Channel's original series When Calls the Heart and The Way Home — averaged more than 1.5 million viewers. The streaming wars were also a factor in a shift toward free advertising supported television initiatives (FAST) in the early 2020s.

With the 525-line NTSC and 625-line ... at least 4-5X the resolution of these NTSC, PAL, and SECAM standards. Digital HDTV signals with 720p (Progressive) and 1080i (Interlace) resolutions started to be delivered in the late 1990s and early 2000s, followed by 1080p....

Major institutions such as Snell ... experiments, where 768 line television at 75 FPS looked subjectively better than 1150 line 50 FPS progressive pictures with higher shutter speeds available (and a corresponding lower ...

As I said at the beginning, people really wanted to see improved quality in the 2000s. Japan started producing HD broadcasts in the 1990s and I think most broadcasters knew it would just be a matter of time before HD came here. As TVs got larger and larger people really began to appreciate the quality of shows on film and digital technology started to come in as well.

Not poor picture quality. I mean that the shows themselves were thought of as being worse because they weren’t made on film. This led to prestige dramas like Dynasty, L.A. Law, and others staying with film.

4K televisions and the like are 4x the quality of those that we had even ten years ago and so anything that isn't 4K is going to be noticeable no matter how good it was to begin with.

On this point I have to disagree, but again, we’re looking back with 20 years of hindsight on how badly early HD footage and CGI work has aged. As it turns out, a ton of productions were shot with the F900 camera, and cameras like it, and the effect on TV production quality was fairly devastating.

It is quite noticeable that sources of news footage, music performances from such things as jools holland, sit coms and such like from the early 80's to around the mid 2000's are of terrible quality, just take a look at black adder or races ...