Wham! - Last Christmas (Official 4K Video) How did they record in 4K in the 80's?

If it was shot on film, it can be scanned at 4k.

So how many K is a film of those days?

Depends on the size of the film and the density. For 35mm, I think you hit the max detail the film has somewhere between 4k and 8k based on dpi of 4000.

Learned something new today, that's amazing!
Thanks!

It is kind of cool that older film prints of work done for television looks 10 times better today than it did originally on a tv.

Same as Tape, and even vinyl, have better sound than digital hocus pocus, plastic speakers and they used to be made from a tree and they sounded BOSS.

So, you think close encounters of the third kind 8K is still possible?

Could be...looks like they shot 35mm with VFX in 65mm. It might look a little better pushed to 8k but not sure. They just finished the 4k transfer a couple of years ago so they might not be eager to do it again.

On close encounters, they might have scanned at much higher than 4k since it was just a couple of years ago. If so, 8k would cost them next to nothing to produce.