I guess we just didn’t expect to see this kind of realism from a TV screen until it came out, it was a totally new arguably ground-braking thing. Especially with fictional media, which is why James Cameron’s Avatar was so great in 3D (despite being utterly boring IMO).

Think about it, the first HD television broadcasts started in the early 90s in Japan. How exciting that must’ve been. They even got HD movies in the form of Hi-Vision Laserdiscs.