How good was broadcast NTSC/PAL in practice?

[Electronic M]

Get a mid range to high end 90s CRT set (available free if you search craigslist long enough) and an LD player good local reception and or cable TV looked like that.

Luminance bandwith varied with TV manufacturer. From 1954 to the mid 70s comb and notch filters were not practical for consumer TVs so luminance was rolled off in the reciever around 3.5MHz. In the late 70s high end sets started getting comb filters which allowed luminance to reach I to the 4MHz rande without dot crawl and adoption of them gradually spread.
Some monochrome sets didn't limit luminance bandwith.

Modern LCD sets tend to handle NTSC noise worse than CRT sets did. I have played VHS and LD side by side on a decent CRT set and a modern HDTV and observed that the picture looked fine on the CRT but objectionably noisy and blurry on the LCD.