NJ
Neil Jones
Founding member
I've long suspected the music channels received a print years ago (which they're probably still using and have since butchered for widescreen) or they've been cobbled from other sources (Slade's 'Merry Xmas Everybody' never had an official music video so the recording that gets wheeled out every year appears to have been taken from something else which had a crawler on it, which is subtly (or not as the case may be) cropped out.)
The Spice Girl videos were posted in 2009 to YouTube (the Who Do You Think You Are was posted in 2019) - I think what's happened is they were uploaded in "decent" quality in the first place but back in 2009 when those were posted YouTube couldn't "play" HD (November 2009 was when it was added) and so it was probably downsampled at the time on the fly. I've seen other videos that date from the previous decade that have suddenly decided they're HD and 4k quality when I know they weren't originally so presumably YouTube's systems can look at the original uploaded file and decide its good enough to play in 4k.
The Spice Girl videos were posted in 2009 to YouTube (the Who Do You Think You Are was posted in 2019) - I think what's happened is they were uploaded in "decent" quality in the first place but back in 2009 when those were posted YouTube couldn't "play" HD (November 2009 was when it was added) and so it was probably downsampled at the time on the fly. I've seen other videos that date from the previous decade that have suddenly decided they're HD and 4k quality when I know they weren't originally so presumably YouTube's systems can look at the original uploaded file and decide its good enough to play in 4k.