Question about old TV show broadcasts

[john]

I was just wondering, why is it that shows like Star Trek and Lost In Space still look good when they're shown today, but other shows, even ones from the 80s, often look like they were taken from a washed out film print? I seriously doubt that the network went back to the original film to produce the video copies for syndication

. For example, TV Land is showing Charlie's Angels and their copies of the episodes look worse than the last time I saw it on TV 2-3 years ago on one of the other channels, like TBS. But they don't really look like what video tape degradation would produce. When TV Land showed The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew episodes, the picture quality was horrible.

 So why do old shows on one channel look lousy while the same show on another channel will look great? If there are better quality copies of these shows available, why do some channels seem to get the bottom of the barrel ones?

[Nathan]

Star Trek and Lost in Space have been digitally remastered, and look much better for it.

Other film reels can deteriorate at variable rates, depending on storage conditions, exposure, initial film quality, etc.

You also don't know when the video transfer you're watching was made from the original film reels.

Nathan