Is this with newer Apple Silicon Macs? My 2020 M1 Mac Mini looks unremarkably normal on my 1440p display. I'm also going between that and my 14" M1 Pro Macbook Pro, which of course looks beautiful but doesn't really make the 1440p on the Mini 'bad'.
Edit: Adding that both of these machines are now running macOS 15.1 at this time.
Further tangent, but I remember seeing Killer NIC's booth at ComicCon in 2007 with that very cool, very pointy heatsink (I assume that is what it was, anyway...?).
The S1 and S2 split was primarily due to deciding against bricking older devices with limited system memory (32/64 MB of storage as well as memory which could only hold so much code). So, S1 is effectively a deprecated system to allow you to continue using those older players but no longer receive system updates (and music services, from what I recall, are in a "YMMV" status).
https://felixrieseberg.github.io/clippy/