I used to have a low-quality TV, and my life was constant suffering.
Magical media from my childhood
If you're old-ish, you probably had a small CRT TV when you where a kid. You might have even had a black and white TV. Our "good" color TV upstairs had separate VHF and UHF knobs, but since we had cable that effectively meant we could only access channels 2-13. (I think a "cable box" may have fixed this?) When I was a bit older we got nicer TVs and at some point we upgraded to a massive, high-quality 32" TV. I think it weighed over 100 lbs, and I could barely even lift it onto the entertainment center.
It's difficult to convey to someone who didn't experience, this, but there was something really magical about being bored and lonely, and settling for some movie you thought you wouldn't enjoy. Because of the lack of options, you stick the the movie, and it wins you over. Not only does it win you over, but it's magical; you're captivated. And because you just bumped into it on TV late at night, you don't actually have any idea what movie you watched. It's 1997 Alta Vista or something, so it's not as if you can just search for the movie's name. It's just a beautiful memory that you can't choose to revisit; it's like a dream.
I think I kept that old UHF / VHF TV with the wood paneling all the way through college. I think I had a cable box and that would accept an A/V input so I could play Gamecube or PS2. (and of course, watch TV in my dorm room) In college, I really learned how to analyze movies and they grew from spectacles to narratives. I started (quite late in the game) to really appreciate subtext and narrative in movies. More than anything, it was due to my excellent history of English literature courses I took in college. I loved the content I watched, and it felt very beautiful and very formative. I had a bit of a media explosion at the same time I was really discovering myself. It was a magical time. At some point in college, I upgraded to one of the last CRTs available; a Sony that output in 480p and had component inputs, maybe from around the 2005-2006 time frame.
False improvement
It's been a while since I've waxed poetic about TVs. TVs now are awful. Smart TVs spy on you more than the regime in 1984. Outside of spying on you, smart TVs are simply awful; they have advertisements, poor UIs, laggy UIs, UIs that get worse over time. You know the drill. TVs suck now.
Because TVs suck now, I have not kept up with technological advances. Our only TV is a quite old and quite small (by modern standards) LCD flat panel. It's 720p and is "good enough." It doesn't have ads or updates, it cannot spy on us, and so it can never become worse than it is right now. No one has been rude to us about our crappy TV, but a LOT of people are quite surprised. Some people actually refuse to watch movies on our TV. Someone actually asked "Is this your only TV?" I said "yes" just because I knew they wouldn't care about the 12" CRT that powers my basement N64. I wasn't trying to be deceptive, I was just sure they didn't want to hear my opinion about TVs.
I wasn't offended in an inter-personal way. I don't care if anyone likes my TV. But I am a bit baffled at the hedonic blindness of it all. It seems that once someone can make an unfavorable comparison between two products, they cease to be able to think about anything else. It does seem obvious that all things being equal (price, features, etc.) you would just want the TV with the better specs. But the thing that makes a movie good is the art direction, the writing, the acting, the plot, etc. Lord of the Rings (or pick your favorite movie or franchise) in 480i is still surprisingly beautiful. And something magic happens when you watch; you adjust to the picture quality, the resolution, the brightness, whatever. The narrative of the movie takes over. You become engrossed in it.
People seem to be blind to this. When 1080p came out, they couldn't suffer 480p or 720p. When 1440p came out, 1080p was unbearable. And now that 4k is available, anything less is unacceptable. But they seem trapped: When 8k is widespread, they will hate their 4k. Didn't they just enjoy it? Conversely, if we had never made 4k available, they would have been happy with 1080p or 1440p. The people in the past watching VHS (which I think is 240i) loved it. They collected them they had the same transformative experiences I had. They were the most beautiful thing available.
Something as low quality as VHS was always capable of producing the emotion and the value of a movie. More resolution does look better in some sense, but it does not actually produce more enjoyment. The enjoyment is filtered through your mind. If 480p is unbearable to you, all you need to do is imagine 32k TVs, and realize that your 4k is awful compared to some theoretical maximum.