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Originally Posted by John Stuart
I was wondering, if TV channels and studios have all the budget why they don't used the best way to record these images that last for decades? Sorry if I am being stupid, but this is something I never could understand, why a 1940 movie can look better than a 1990 TV show. Can someone please explain?  |
Actually, you are missing a piece of the puzzle in your original question. The information you quoted only refers to video cameras. Even though it says video cameras are used "sometimes" in film production, that's misleading. They do release "films" that are made on video originally, but traditionally, "film" is a medium, or format, like video tape is a medium. You are on the cusp of the fact that video has long been a lower-quality format in relation to film, even when what you see in "video" actually came from a film camera in the first place. It's only been in the last decade that this gap has seriously closed with high-definition video.
For decades, they have used film for anything they wanted to "last for decades." Video was initially a novelty, and expensive. They didn't save tapes, because they needed to re-use them to justify the cost.
This gets to your Doctor Who issue, because they made that show using video cameras, but the only reasonable way to keep a copy of the show was to point a film camera at a video monitor. We're getting into new technologies that can take those films and correct some of the unnatural distortions associated with the the process of filming monitors, but even then, we're talking about video in the early days. 1963 video could not approach the look of film shot in 1940.
A good number of TV shows made between your examples - Doctor Who in 1963 and Babylon 5 in 1993 - did use film, and you might be surprised to see, for example, some episodes of Bonanza filmed before Doctor Who look relatively good, because they shot it on film. The original film probably was always sharp and fresh, but on TV, it was only as good as the technology that converts it to video. But the same film looks better on TV now than it did in the 1960s, because the process we use to play film on TV has changed dramatically. And we still have that film to go back and "try again" to put in into video format.
Shows like Bonanza (plenty of examples: The Fugitive, Bewitched, Columbo, Knight Rider to name just a handful) used to cut film before going to video, which at least left a piece of film that could be used in the future to "try again" and get better video. But at some point it became more efficient to put ALL the film on tape first and THEN edit. So the final program was set as a video, which is going to be the exact same (lesser) quality forever. They could "try again" by converting all the original film to video a second time with improved modern technology, but then you would have to edit again as well, which is more complicated and expensive than most people would want to approach (unless you're Seinfeld, I guess). So it's really unlikely Babylon 5 will ever look better, even though it's theoretically possible (unless they junked all the film).
Short answer: It's all in the way that the film gets converted into video, which took a long time to perfect. And "films" for theaters are expensive, while television is cheap.