You should watch some of the stuff ESPN is putting on. They did a small shooting tournament with NBA players and it looked like a 2005 era video stream. They very clearly didn't even think about video or audio quality AT ALL.
Joking, but the sports channels have been broadcasting a lot of "classic" (and not so classic) sport events that I remember from as far back as a teenager, and the quality is so bad I can't believe we used to watch it.
Pro tip: If all you see is the sport on the screen with no graphics (or the score/clock!) it's > 25 years old.
The quality wasn't that bad, the recording you're watching is. On the one hand, a friend of mine who's wife is apparently enjoying Columbo reruns, commented on the pancake makeup being quite noticable. Which I suppose it would be if pulling from the original tapes or whatever. On the other hand, my wife and I watched a few reruns of Taxi (late 70s) and I know if it looked that bad back in the day, I wouldn't have watched it.
There might not have been a lot of lines of resolution, but SD TV looked better than many recordings would have you believe. And remember that you're probably watching on a TV three or four times larger than what was used to originally view it.
Of course it is, we collectively didn't spend the money on moving to HD because it's the healthy thing to do. Arguing that HD isn't superior to SD would be silly. Good thing that wasn't what I was saying.
What I am saying is that if you were to go watch an old episode of Taxi on CBS All Access, it did not look as bad when it originally aired on a CRT as it does on CBS's rip from whatever source they used.