Some of it was NTSC and composite video's limited bandwidth smearing stuff together, but quite a bit of it was the less capable beam shaping and less precise ph

Some of it was NTSC and composite video's limited bandwidth smearing stuff together, but quite a bit of it was the less capable beam shaping and less precise phosphor masks on TV-grade CRTs. Basically, yes, vintage TVs were terrible and made up for it by being very blurry.