Why some "remastered" music videos look awful

Summary by Krater

Tom Scott examines why many YouTube music video remasters from the 2010s look terrible, explaining how upscaling standard-definition analog tape to high definition often degrades quality, and concludes that the HD remasters are often worse than the originals.

From the video

Answers: Why do HD remastered music videos on YouTube look so bad?

• music video remasters
• standard definition vs high definition
• analog tape archiving
• deinterlacing video
• upscaling archival footage

What it concludes

• Recreating music video edits in 4K using surviving 4K scans often results in missing footage and timing discrepancies.
• Upgrading a professional definition videotape to HD via deinterlacing improves appearance compared to analog signals, but lacks original sharpness.
• The 2019 HD remaster of Smash Mouth's All Star looks worse than the original standard definition video due to botched upscaling and deinterlacing.
• Changing the historical record through poor HD remasters of classic music videos makes them worse than the original standard definition versions.