To me one of the problems in modern demoscene is that modern PCs (especially GPUs) are so ridiculously powerful that full fat PC demos struggle to fully take advantage of it, at least in a way that is apparent to viewer. To me it feels like the emphasis has shifted more on the content side than purely techical excellence.
Sizecoding is another matter, and arguably the more interesting side of the scene these days. But it is kinda sad that we need artificial restrictions to make things interesting rather than trying to exploit every drop of perf you can squeeze from the computer.