Buying old TV shows on DVD and the quality is poor

Watching an standard definition, DVD is a big step down from what we are used to now. To me, it's essentially unwatchable. When DVD came out, average TV was like 26" and it was night and day better than VHS. But I have a box full of DVD's I purchased that I haven really touched in like 15+ years because it looks really pixelated to me now on a big screen.

Then you have the issue of how it was encoded, dual layers,4:3, anamorphic, etc. I can't speak if it's a pirated copy, that's obviously going to be even worse as they are probably going to compress as much as possible.

Also, some shows were shot on tape, some didn't spend real money being restored properly, etc. Usually when something is streamed "today" it looks pretty good, at least to my eyes. But shows put 20 years ago on SD DVD? Probably not great.

My advice is look for BluRay copies of it or subscribe to a streamer that has the show you want.