I always find the idea of future proofing interesting here. Like the way Seinfeld reruns are in HD even though the technology didn't really exist at the time--because they shot a TV show in actual film and then could re-scan it later to keep up with modern tech.
Crazy expensive but obviously given the value of those reruns the cost made sense.
They did this to some of the star trek series. Some scenes you can see things that were not meant to be seen. E.g. here Kirk and Khan are arguing, and then suddenly two people dressed like them start fighting: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=B_c...
I can't find it now, but I believe they even redid some of the early CG effects by just rerendering the old models with modern software. It's worth preserving that kind of stuff for future generations. One of my favorite video games was rereleased over a decade later with updated graphics. Sadly they had to recreate everything from scratch because the original files were lost. And the original models were very high detail. They just converted to 2d and down sampled a ton because of the limitations of PCs at the time.
I think the point the parent was trying to make was that 4K resolution can be detrimental. You can plainly see that the two actors that play the original characters didn't actually perform the fight scene. In the original broadcast the resolution was so low that makeup and effects didn't really have to be that great in order to work.
Crazy expensive but obviously given the value of those reruns the cost made sense.