Why does "old porn" look old?

lololulu19

I have noticed that porn from the age of VHS, even if CD/DVD rips looks faded, dark, and quite low quality including the sound.

I wonder why that is. My speculation is that someone has a 40 year old VHS tape in a drawer, that they convert into being a DVD.

raphjd

@lololulu19

That's most often the case.

I don't know of any studio remasters of vintage porn.

eobox91103

@lololulu19 said in Why does "old porn" look old?:

My speculation is that someone has a 40 year old VHS tape in a drawer, that they convert into being a DVD.

Also, people from the 1980's would make copies of copies of copies of VHS tapes, and the quality would go down with each copying since it was an analog process done with machines of different characteristics. (Every video tape recorder--even from the same manufacturer--has slightly different head alignment and such. Tapes can look very good when played back on the machine that recorded them, but they lose quality when played/recorded on multiple machines.)

Some older American studios (e.g., Catalina) made "anniversary editions," and those can look decent. But material from Germany in the 1990's is often third or fourth (at least) hand since those studios were shut down for using underage models.

Dracula975

From the 1970s through the 1990s, almost all porn was recorded on VHS tape. Even a well preserved master that is converted to digital is restricted in being "poor quality" no matter how well it's done. This is due to the poor quality of VHS recording in general.

Even digitally enhanced remastered copies of VHS recordings look "old" because the original copy was low quality from the start.

Not to mention that magnetic tape (which is what VHS is) degrades over time, even in the best of environments. Porn studios weren't really known for keeping their masters in the best possible location inside their offices.

kco

@lololulu19 Camera noise.
In the past 10 years camera sensors have skyrocketed in terms of noise. I would say mainly thanks to Sony (lead technology). But because of mobile demand (lead consumer/"user").
When I mean noise I mean higher sensitivity, bla bla.
Thus, even theater movies from the late '10 look noisy compared to nowadays crisp and noise-free tv-shows recorded in the past 18-24 months.

Past production chain:
"Low quality" native resolution source sensor --> "low quality" lossy codec for production (4:2:0) --> poor reencoding low bitrate (MPEG2, QT, whatever). --> CRT displays /Early LCD (usually low res, low dpi)

Current production chain:
"High quality" high resolution source sensor --> "high quality" lossy or almost lossless codec in production (4:4:4 or 4:2:2) --> Video Downsizing (even more noise reduction) --> high quality reencoding with higher bitrate (H264, H265, VP9, AV1) --> IPS/OLED displays (higher res, higuer dpi)

So:

Porn was usually recorded in poor light conditions and/or not top of the notch cameras.
Access to professional grade or even cinematographic grade cameras and production process has reduced 100 times (maybe more) in the past 20 years.
The average consumer display has 6-20 times the pixels, 4-10 times the contrast, and 3-5 times the colour gamut compared to the DVD era.

There you have it.