Music videos looked better in the 90's

Watching several of them from this decade (i.e. Sugar Ray's Every Morning, Fastball's The Way, and Smash Mouth's All Star), I can't help but notice how much better they looked in terms of the colors in the photography. Today's music videos, however, the colors look all dull and washed out.

I hope I'm not the only one who feels this way.

 

I actually really dislike the oversaturated colors of the 90's. To me, "All Star" stands out as one of the ugliest videos ever with its yellow tint. To each their own, I guess.

 

Better and more advanced equipment coupled with the 80's look getting out of fashion had something to do with better picture quality. What you say can much be seen on Van Halen's Video Hits DVD. The videos from the 80's looked soft, grainy as they used to be shot on 16 mm film, with fake looking colors, as we got to the 90's the first videos from 1991 from the For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge album looked far far better than the 3 year older videos from the 1988 album OU812. The videos from Balance from 1995 also look terrific.
I alsonoticed the same on Madonna's Inmaculate Collection DVD I saw at a friend's, the 80's video looked fuzzy, soft, noisy or grainy and with oversaturated and fake looking colors, get into the 90's videos and everything changes.
Live concert videos also use to look dreadful. Many were shot to 16 mm film and then all postproduction done on video tape recorders of the time. This was a killing combination that at least for my taste looked ugly. Examples of this are Van Halen's Live Without A Net, which looks horrendous, it has tons of film grain, tons of video noise and oversaturated and fake looking color. In addition to that, some film elements, that were supposedly used once just for postproduction with the final master ending up on video tape, are in bad shape with scratches and dirt. When it was released on DVD in 2004 even the European edition was on NTSC video, and it looks dreadful, but if it was converted to PAL for European release that would have made it unwatchable.
Another good example of those "vintage" 80's concert videos shot to 16 mm film and postproduced to video tape of the time is Madonna's LIVE The Virgin Tour, another crappy looking concert video from the 90's.
Another bad example of this that got into the 90's is Van Halen's 1993 (I guess it was shot in 1992) concert video Right Here, Right Now, awful looking video. Even some Spanish bands got better shot concert videos in the early 90's than Van Halen which was/is a major American band. Incredible but true.

 

That's the problem with most of those music videos from the 80's, and TV shows from that era (for example Matlock). Even if they were shot on film (16mm or 35mm) the final product was still assembled on VideoTape.

 

Correct me if I’m wrong but didn’t one of the Queen video compilations go back to the original film elements to restore their videos?

 

And what about the music?
Surely that must have some importance, no?

I never liked videos. I prefer listening over watching.

 

More proof that analog is better than digital. I assume the aforementioned late 90s were done to analog?

 

Ah, the late 90s "brightness wars".

 

A lot of music videos pre-1984 have a certain "look" to them. I like it but I want to know what's going on there to give them that look. Maybe it's what you're talking about in your post.

Take for example, Men at Work's "Down Under":




Notice how the color of the sky looks so weird. A lot of of those early music videos have that look. "Pass the Dutchie" is another example. Elvis Costello's "Oliver's Army" is yet another. They all have that look.

 

I think artists from PAL countries such as Men at Work, Musical Youth, and Elvis Costello stuck to that look even past 1984 for awhile.

 

Probably has something to with the PAL to NTSC conversion. Compare those vids to vids made by US artists.

 

Much could be regained by transferring the original 16mm footage to 2K or 4K.

Example: "Safety Dance" has beautiful color and would promise a very nice result if re-mastered from film:

 

The videos that Anton Corbjin did for Depeche Mode still hold up, although they were shot on Super 8, so that might have made a difference. I will say that the vids from "Songs Of Faith And Devotion" look a lot a better.

 

same goes with BD and DVD...what happened?