This may sound weird but when I look at old tv footage, the picture quality of the footage help determine when it was from. It may not be accurate all the time (especially in the wake of hd remasters) but each era seems to produce a certain "look" for tv shows.

Here are some footage samples from each decade while I try analyzing the look ( I didn't grew up in the 00s so at most, i'll only the get 90s-onwards right0

50s- mid 60s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgb7-W4cEq8
Most of the tv shows were in black and white film dirt and hair run rampant. It has a blurry look probably caused by a lot of shows being broadcasted by video taping a film-projected copy of the show.

60s- 70s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHQTYq20_-Ehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qjhle9_xlp4

The use of color becomes widespread (and by the 70s, becomes a standard).
The colors themselves look faded with some sort of light touch. Some later 70s footage have a yellowish tint. The picture quality look blurry and fuzzy. Shows shot on film exhibit film dirt and hair

Late 70s-80s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOnqjkJTMaA
Footage looks a bit dim and has that diffused smoke look (it was a lightning techinique rampant in the era)
Colors are more accurate compared to the 70s but it still looks faded. It's also a bit sharper

90s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXxRyNvTPr8
Except for some very early 90s footage, most of the graininess and film specks are gone and the dim diffused look is also gone. Picture quality is sharper than 80s but still has some "blur". The colors are nearly lifelike now (there is still some fade in it). Some footage has a reddish-orangish tint while others have some color bleeding

2000-2006
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YzabSdk7ZA
Except for certain shows that are either stuck in the 90s with it's blurry look or has color bleeding, the footage from this era is sharp, clear and has colors that are lifelike

2006-2010
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E5NxtIogKM
This is when the move to 16:9 hd started to become more widespread.
PQ is sharp due to HD and the colors are similar to the ones from the mid-00s.

2010-present
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOkQ4T5WO9E
Picture looks sharper then ever. Colors are more cold due to the widespread usage of digital film.

Films and Animated Tv shows are different.
In a nutshell, color films from the 50s and 60s have this lush creamy color palette, 70s and 80s look assier and have this diffused smoke look, 90s look cleaner with colors that are both warm and cold, 00s look really grainless and is not as cold as 90s colorwise and 2010s looking digital-like with cold color palletes

This may sound weird but when I look at old tv footage, the picture quality of the footage help determine when it was from. It may not be accurate all the time (especially in the wake of hd remasters) but each era seems to produce a certain "look" for tv shows.

Here are some footage samples from each decade while I try analyzing the look ( I didn't grew up in the 00s so at most, i'll only the get 90s-onwards right0

50s- mid 60s
zgb7-W4cEq8
Most of the tv shows were in black and white film dirt and hair run rampant. It has a blurry look probably caused by a lot of shows being broadcasted by video taping a film-projected copy of the show.

60s- 70s yHQTYq20_-Eqjhle9_xlp4

The use of color becomes widespread (and by the 70s, becomes a standard).
The colors themselves look faded with some sort of light touch. Some later 70s footage have a yellowish tint. The picture quality look blurry and fuzzy. Shows shot on film exhibit film dirt and hair

Late 70s-80s
sOnqjkJTMaA
Footage looks a bit dim and has that diffused smoke look (it was a lightning techinique rampant in the era)
Colors are more accurate compared to the 70s but it still looks faded. It's also a bit sharper

90s
UXxRyNvTPr8
Except for some very early 90s footage, most of the graininess and film specks are gone and the dim diffused look is also gone. Picture quality is sharper than 80s but still has some "blur". The colors are nearly lifelike now (there is still some fade in it). Some footage has a reddish-orangish tint while others have some color bleeding

2000-2006
8YzabSdk7ZA
Except for certain shows that are either stuck in the 90s with it's blurry look or has color bleeding, the footage from this era is sharp, clear and has colors that are lifelike

2006-2010
-E5NxtIogKM
This is when the move to 16:9 hd started to become more widespread.
PQ is sharp due to HD and the colors are similar to the ones from the mid-00s.

2010-present
kOkQ4T5WO9E
Picture looks sharper then ever. Colors are more cold due to the widespread usage of digital film.

Films and Animated Tv shows are different.
In a nutshell, color films from the 50s and 60s have this lush creamy color palette, 70s and 80s look assier and have this diffused smoke look, 90s look cleaner with colors that are both warm and cold, 00s look really grainless and is not as cold as 90s colorwise and 2010s looking digital-like with cold color palletes


Fixed it for you.

Keep in mind that much of the old 1950s/60s video that exists came from kinescope recordings that are inferior in quality to the live broadcast, which even at the time could look quite sharp with the proper reception and antenna. For the '80s era, IMO the "diffused smoke" was mostly just a technique used on certain types of programming, mostly music videos/commercials. If anything, the darker lighting for the '70s/'80s was due to the studio lighting, not the recorder. You'll see that on The Price Is Right for example, the '70s episodes aren't as bright due to dimmer and fewer studio lights, but the lightning kept getting stronger over the decades. I've also found that early live satellite footage from the late '70s/'80s (think blimp/helicopter footage) is also quite primitive. There is also the fact that most VCR recordings produce a picture that is inferior in resolution to the original broadcast. 

Let's not forget audio quality, which was mono until the mid-late '80s (except for MTV which was Stereo from day one), and then the sound didn't get really lifelike until HDMI 5.1 arrived in the early 2000s. Even among the mono era, '50s audio sounds considerably fuzzier and has more of an "echo" (think Elvis performances and newsreels) compared to the '70s which had the advantage of multi-track sound which made it sound reasonably crisp. 

I think audio quality is one of the biggest things that distinguishes music from the early 50s versus the late 40s, which are otherwise largely the same era. Recordings from the first few years after World War II still have that extreme muffle that instantly place them in vintage territory. However, crooner ballads from the first half of the 50s can be reasonably compared to modern recordings by artists like Michael Buble and Harry Connick, Jr. They aren't perfect, of course, but they're at least fairly accessible to younger generations.

Sometimes, video recordings could look terrible because they're copies of copies.

The 2010-present picture quality will eventually look old school in the next decade, when videos recorded in the 2020's will look even better than today.

The 2010-present picture quality will eventually look old school in the next decade, when videos recorded in the 2020's will look even better than today.


Well honestly, I can't think of any video quality that's clearer than high definition 1080p. Then again, I wasn't saying the same thing in the early-mid 2000's when I thought standard definition HQ was the clearest type videos.

Everything was so clear by 1993.

Well honestly, I can't think of any video quality that's clearer than high definition 1080p. Then again, I wasn't saying the same thing in the early-mid 2000's when I thought standard definition HQ was the clearest type videos.


There is 4K, which means 2160p and there is 8K, which means 4320p. I expect 4K to become popular in 2020 and 8K to become popular in 2030.

Things started looking clear by the late 1990s to me.

I think the HD era of the 2010s feels distinctly newer than the 90s and 2000s in general, even though there are some movies from the 2000s whose picture and audio quality hold up great by current standards.

I think the HD era of the 2010s feels distinctly newer than the 90s and 2000s in general, even though there are some movies from the 2000s whose picture and audio quality hold up great by current standards.


Well that's the thing about HD. It'll always be considered HD. High quality definition is now the standard. What was once known as Standard Definition can pretty much be seen as low definition by today's standards while the current high definition (720/1080p) will be standard definition by the time 4K and 8K become the norm. By the 2020s the era of 480p tvs/movies will be a distance memory of a soon to be fairly distance age. Or at least that's what I think anyways.

Although the thing about HD is that it'll always look good while SD quality is starting to show its age when compared to 1080p or 4K.

Things started looking clear by the late 1990s to me.


It felt more clear in the very late 2000s, when HD was starting to get more mainstream.

It felt more clear in the very late 2000s, when HD was starting to get more mainstream.


Well late 1990s - mid 2000s was when things started becoming clear, but as of 2016 the 480p sub-HD visuals are showing their age. And also consider that in the late 1990s-mid 2000s people were still using CRT TVs which didn't always give really clear visuals (at least mine didn't). In the late 2000s when HD become huge and HD TVs were becoming popular that's when things started to become REALLY clear.

Makes me wonder if there will even be a resolution beyond HD. Like MD (Mega Definiton) or something funny like that. Hard to image people still using things like 4K or 8k HD by the end of the 21st century. People in 2092 using the same resolution used by people from 2016 just sounds weird.

Well late 1990s - mid 2000s was when things started becoming clear, but as of 2016 the 480p sub-HD visuals are showing their age. And also consider that in the late 1990s-mid 2000s people were still using CRT TVs which didn't always give really clear visuals (at least mine didn't). In the late 2000s when HD become huge and HD TVs were becoming popular that's when things started to become REALLY clear.

Makes me wonder if there will even be a resolution beyond HD. Like MD (Mega Definiton) or something funny like that. Hard to image people still using things like 4K or 8k HD by the end of the 21st century. People in 2092 using the same resolution used by people from 2016 just sounds weird.


I think in the early 2090s, people would use a resolution that seems life-like, although I don't know if they'll still use TVs by then.

I think in the early 2090s, people would use a resolution that seems life-like, although I don't know if they'll still use TVs by then.


People would probably be using holographic tvs by the early 2090s.

Things started looking clear by the late 1990s to me.


Yeah, the early 2000s even moreso. The DVD era.

Yeah, the early 2000s even moreso. The DVD era.


Well, there were people who used DVDs during the late 90s. Although, I do agree that people used them more starting in the early 2000s.