Remastering "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine" with Machine Learning

ExtremeTech tackles upscaling DS9. Lots of comparisons with both OTT and MKV sources.

https://www.extremetech.com/extreme...g-topaz-video-enhance-ai-review#disqus_thread

Minimum h/w is a GTX 1050.
https://topazlabs.com/video-enhance-ai/
Some of those looked good. IMO, most of the shots of people had marginal improvements. It seems like where this might be useful is if CBS/Viacom rescanned the original negatives, then just upscaled the SFX (assuming they weren't overbuilt as was the case in some instances). As it stands, DS9 is simply unwatchable for me on the DVDs and Netflix.
 
Some of those looked good. IMO, most of the shots of people had marginal improvements. It seems like where this might be useful is if CBS/Viacom rescanned the original negatives, then just upscaled the SFX (assuming they weren't overbuilt as was the case in some instances). As it stands, DS9 is simply unwatchable for me on the DVDs and Netflix.
I remember reading somewhere that to save time and money the series was shot and edited on VHS directly and the CGI work was all animated and rendered at 480p to minimize times. There isn’t much they can reasonably do to the original footage to improve it that would justify the costs.

Found the article.
https://treknews.net/2017/02/02/why-ds9-voyager-not-on-blu-ray-hd/

TLDR; they spent more than 12m to remaster TNG and they didn’t make that back, it would cost as much or more for DS9 and Voyager. But with streaming dominating and disc sales pretty non existent they have 0 incentive to do it.
 
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I remember reading somewhere that to save time and money the series was shot and edited on VHS directly and the CGI work was all animated and rendered at 480p to minimize times. There isn’t much they can reasonably do to the original footage to improve it that would justify the costs.

Found the article.
https://treknews.net/2017/02/02/why-ds9-voyager-not-on-blu-ray-hd/

TLDR; they spent more than 12m to remaster TNG and they didn’t make that back, it would cost as much or more for DS9 and Voyager. But with streaming dominating and disc sales pretty non existent they have 0 incentive to do it.
They just need to kickstart it. It's not like they can't make money from selling syndication of the remastered version and streaming rights (assuming they don't want to put it on CBS All Access). But that's just me. I can honestly say I had 0 interested in buying TNG. I like the show, but it's not one I want in HD. I've seen it at least 2x and that's good enough. OTOH, DS9 I would have watched 4 or 5x by now if it was available on Blu Ray or better, but after waiting 7 years to rewatch it on disk, it became clear it looked really shitty on anything other than an old SD tube.
 
I'm the other way around. I watch TNG many times, and I did buy the blu-ray set this last Xmas. I don't watch DS9 that many times, probably once or twice, because 2 of the characters are always suffering from constipation.
 
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They just need to kickstart it. It's not like they can't make money from selling syndication of the remastered version and streaming rights (assuming they don't want to put it on CBS All Access). But that's just me. I can honestly say I had 0 interested in buying TNG. I like the show, but it's not one I want in HD. I've seen it at least 2x and that's good enough. OTOH, DS9 I would have watched 4 or 5x by now if it was available on Blu Ray or better, but after waiting 7 years to rewatch it on disk, it became clear it looked really shitty on anything other than an old SD tube.
Even if Paramount kickstarted it raised the 12 million and gave all the backers a Blu-ray box set they wouldn’t be making any more from the syndication rights then they already are, it would be a time sync, somebody would have to stick their necks out and the result would be at best a net 0. And if god forbid the Kickstarter didn’t make the required money somebody is gonna look like a huge ass at the next few staff meetings. It’s a lot of personal risk for very little reward... Sadly this one will all be on the fans, and if it ever does get close to complete I’m sure it will get lawyered into oblivion.
 
Even if Paramount kickstarted it raised the 12 million and gave all the backers a Blu-ray box set they wouldn’t be making any more from the syndication rights then they already are, it would be a time sync, somebody would have to stick their necks out and the result would be at best a net 0. And if god forbid the Kickstarter didn’t make the required money somebody is gonna look like a huge ass at the next few staff meetings. It’s a lot of personal risk for very little reward... Sadly this one will all be on the fans, and if it ever does get close to complete I’m sure it will get lawyered into oblivion.
I'm not so sure about that. If I owned a station, I wouldn't buy rights to DS9. It looks like shit and looks so bad that it plays better with no picture. As for it failing at a kickstarter, they simply preface it with, "We're doing this to see if there's sufficient demand to remaster it. If we get this money, we'll do it. If we don't, then we won't."

I see no risk at all. They either succeed or maintain the status quo.
 
I'm not so sure about that. If I owned a station, I wouldn't buy rights to DS9. It looks like shit and looks so bad that it plays better with no picture. As for it failing at a kickstarter, they simply preface it with, "We're doing this to see if there's sufficient demand to remaster it. If we get this money, we'll do it. If we don't, then we won't."

I see no risk at all. They either succeed or maintain the status quo.
Yeah but you are thinking rationally, you have to remember Paramount shelved the Star Trek movies because they only made 140 million in profits off the last one and they wanted Marvel numbers.
 
Yeah but you are thinking rationally, you have to remember Paramount shelved the Star Trek movies because they only made 140 million in profits off the last one and they wanted Marvel numbers.

If it doesn't make all the money, it may as well have made none.
 
Yeah but you are thinking rationally, you have to remember Paramount shelved the Star Trek movies because they only made 140 million in profits off the last one and they wanted Marvel numbers.
Was that why? I assumed it was because Anton died and possibly because the last movie, as I recall, wasn't that good. Cast may have become to expensive too.
Regardless, kickstarting it could essentially mean there's limited risk to remastering and they have a source of income that they likely don't have right now.

But what do I know. I'm just a guy who spent hundreds on the DVDs roughly 20 years ago. And CBS is just a company with a streaming service that might benefit from having an HD version of DS9 🤷‍♂️
 
If it doesn't make all the money, it may as well have made none.
Again, kickstart it and see what happens. Worse case scenario they don't do it. It doesn't cost much of anything to put up a kickstarter for a project.
 
Never watched DS9 and would love a remastered HD version. Seems pointless tho if it is true they used crappy recording equipment.
 
Was that why? I assumed it was because Anton died and possibly because the last movie, as I recall, wasn't that good. Cast may have become to expensive too.
Regardless, kickstarting it could essentially mean there's limited risk to remastering and they have a source of income that they likely don't have right now.

But what do I know. I'm just a guy who spent hundreds on the DVDs roughly 20 years ago. And CBS is just a company with a streaming service that might benefit from having an HD version of DS9 🤷‍♂️

No company is going to spend millions of dollars only to make their money back. Also they would either need to Kickstart the entire series, at tens of millions of dollars (at least), or one season at a time with huge per-season costs. They would also need to sell season sets for a lot of money to recoup costs. A kickstarter is utterly unreasonable.
 
I can't say I care all that much. The initial cast was pretty boring, which is why they changed up so much of the regular cast by Season 4. I tried to rewatch the first two seasons, and it's just too damn repetitive.

With DS9,You barely have half a series of decent episodes (good stuff starts around Season 4). At least TNG hit it's prime during season 2 (with most of the original cast intact).

It was clear they had no idea where to take it, so in later seasons they mostly imported major TNG stars, and focused mostly on conflict with the Cardassians.

But it's a beautiful mess compared to the completely unsalvageable Voyager. That's the only reason this is getting any love.
 
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No company is going to spend millions of dollars only to make their money back. Also they would either need to Kickstart the entire series, at tens of millions of dollars (at least), or one season at a time with huge per-season costs. They would also need to sell season sets for a lot of money to recoup costs. A kickstarter is utterly unreasonable.
It cost 12 million to remaster TnG and they didn't make their money back from that venture, DS9 would cost significantly more due to the greatly increased use of CGI.
 
Vote for the Presidential candidate that promises to do both DS9 and Voyager (Make Politically Correct Star Trek Great Again)

(ok, maybe that was too political, but I don't think it's part of any particular candidate's or party's platform today)
 
ExtremeTech's continuing saga:

Deep Space Nine Upscale Project Update: ‘Sacrifice of Angels’




The enhancement is subtle but a clear improvement. It reminds me of the 2019 Nvidia Shield's AI Upscaling feature, which can enhance 1080 on 4K screens. (unfortunately you can't use it to upscale SD material) I still want a soup-to-nuts TNG-styled re-master of DS9. If you've seen the DS9 documentary, "What We Left Behind," you'll totally understand. But that's not going to happen unless CBS/Paramount pulls their head out.

But after playing this clip on my LG OLED, and comparing it to my DVD-MKV rips on the PLEX server; I'm actually changing my mind on Upscaling. If we can't crowd-fund a remaster- we should be able to crowd-source an Upscale, similar to what's been done with Star Wars De-Specialized Edition.

Yeah, I'm dreaming. 176 episodes, even if it's not scene-by-scene would take years.
 
ExtremeTech's continuing saga:

Deep Space Nine Upscale Project Update: ‘Sacrifice of Angels’




The enhancement is subtle but a clear improvement. It reminds me of the 2019 Nvidia Shield's AI Upscaling feature, which can enhance 1080 on 4K screens. (unfortunately you can't use it to upscale SD material) I still want a soup-to-nuts TNG-styled re-master of DS9. If you've seen the DS9 documentary, "What We Left Behind," you'll totally understand. But that's not going to happen unless CBS/Paramount pulls their head out.

But after playing this clip on my LG OLED, and comparing it to my DVD-MKV rips on the PLEX server; I'm actually changing my mind on Upscaling. If we can't crowd-fund a remaster- we should be able to crowd-source an Upscale, similar to what's been done with Star Wars De-Specialized Edition.

Yeah, I'm dreaming. 176 episodes, even if it's not scene-by-scene would take years.


My new shield's AI upscales DS-9 from Netflix and it looks excellent!
 
Id rather cbs spend 21 million per episode to restore ds9 to hd.. than to film another episode of std.
STD could have been fantastic, as I actually like the interesting overly stylized artwork and even dug the first three episodes, but they went so "woke" with the straight white male bashing, fat acceptance, masculine women, lgtbtq and so forth that they forgot to actually make a compelling plot and cast decent actors. Propaganda for your agenda should only ever be a subtext, never overtly blatant or you alienate the audience that isn't already on board anyway, making it a self-defeating series for even hardcore liberals as well with it culminating in nothing more than a circle-jerk rather than a means to win hearts and minds and recruitment tool.
 
I have 3 episodes left of DS9. Maybe 5-10 years from now when I'm ready to watch it again they will have it upgraded. I think this is my 2nd time through all the Star Treks since they originally aired.
 
Yep definitely check it out.
Still looked pretty bad to me. TBH, it seems to look better on BBC America, but I think they're doing some cropping, because it takes up much more of the screen than a 4:3, but I found it more watchable (even if it was horribly compressed cable). Alas it's in the middle of the run and i'll need a lot more storage in my TiVo to record 7 years of DS9...especially since it seems like they show a ton of eps back to back.....though if they did 1 season every few weeks, I could probably pull it off.
 
Based on this, it looks like the AI does better with SFX than filmed segments, which begs the question: why doesn't paramount rescan the negatives, rerender SFX if the original bits are available (and they were overbuilt as some clearly were) and just upscale the rest.

If this article is right and the cost for TNG was 70k/episode, they should be able to easily get most of that back from sales in Blu Ray (or god willing upscaled HDR 4k disks) and syndication.
For that matter, I bet they could get a huge chunk of that money from a kickstarter campaign. FFS, if Veronica Mars can get 7-8 million for a movie, I'm sure they can get at least 1/2 of the costs from kickstarting this project. I know others have said they'll consider it too risky, but a failed kickstarter just confirms what htey already believe and it costs them virtually nothing to do.
 
Based on this, it looks like the AI does better with SFX than filmed segments, which begs the question: why doesn't paramount rescan the negatives, rerender SFX if the original bits are available (and they were overbuilt as some clearly were) and just upscale the rest.

Upscale them from what? Do you think you can just crop them out of the video?

Rescanning is a major piece of work. Once they do that, they are pretty much committed to all the work:
https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-trek-ds9-voyager-hd-blu-ray-will-likely-never-happen/

TNG was the most popular trek, and they couldn't make money on that, back when people still bought disks.

There is no hope for DS9 getting done.
 
Based on this, it looks like the AI does better with SFX than filmed segments, which begs the question: why doesn't paramount rescan the negatives, rerender SFX if the original bits are available (and they were overbuilt as some clearly were) and just upscale the rest.

If this article is right and the cost for TNG was 70k/episode, they should be able to easily get most of that back from sales in Blu Ray (or god willing upscaled HDR 4k disks) and syndication.
For that matter, I bet they could get a huge chunk of that money from a kickstarter campaign. FFS, if Veronica Mars can get 7-8 million for a movie, I'm sure they can get at least 1/2 of the costs from kickstarting this project. I know others have said they'll consider it too risky, but a failed kickstarter just confirms what htey already believe and it costs them virtually nothing to do.

They lost a shit ton of money on the TNG remaster so that's why they won't do it
 
Upscale them from what? Do you think you can just crop them out of the video?

Rescanning is a major piece of work. Once they do that, they are pretty much committed to all the work:
https://www.denofgeek.com/tv/star-trek-ds9-voyager-hd-blu-ray-will-likely-never-happen/

TNG was the most popular trek, and they couldn't make money on that, back when people still bought disks.

There is no hope for DS9 getting done.
Which is why you kickstart it and see what they can get up front. If you buy into the article posted by Saturn, it's about 100k/episode. It's possible they can get that. And if they can't, then what did they lose?
 
Which is why you kickstart it and see what they can get up front. If you buy into the article posted by Saturn, it's about 100k/episode. It's possible they can get that. And if they can't, then what did they lose?

Which totals out to $20 Million. It's not possible that they get that. You don't get an episode done for $100K if just doing a handful, that's the volume price.

If they couldn't make less than that back on TNG, on a more favorable series, in a more favorable time, they obviously don't stand a chance with DS9.

Out best chance to get something more watchable is something like AI reconstruction several years in the future.
 
Which totals out to $20 Million. It's not possible that they get that. You don't get an episode done for $100K if just doing a handful, that's the volume price.

If they couldn't make less than that back on TNG, on a more favorable series, in a more favorable time, they obviously don't stand a chance with DS9.

Out best chance to get something more watchable is something like AI reconstruction several years in the future.
They won't know if they don't try. And TBC, I don't buy into the idea that they need to sell 90,000 copies of the series from around 200 bucks to break even. They make money from syndication and streaming too and if it didn't look like shit, they might bet more money for it. I love DS9, and I would never bother watching it on Netflix (though BBCA has done something to make it look somewhat watchable).

Kickstart it and see what happens. If they get half the money back on presales, they'll make the rest back through streaming, syndication, digital downloads and what not and it's possible they'll get more. Again, Vernonica Mars got almost half the 17.6 million required for a single movie (and one that was not nearly as good as the series or the limited series that Hulu had).

If it fails, it fails, but not trying is criminal.
 
for the upcoming holiday, I am digging out the movie Star Trek: Evloutions , on the first section, there is 2 future Enterprise beyond Enterprise F, does anyone knows if there is any 4K wallpaper on those 2 models
 
I bought the entire Star Trek TNG Blu-ray series for $65 a few yr. ago. Today, at amazon (same place I got it) is at $129

I thought these movie / tv series get cheaper as we go fwd. in time. I want to buy the X-files series too, but year after year, I can't find a good price at amazon,and I don't want to do ebay as I don't know if they are boot leg
 
I bought the entire Star Trek TNG Blu-ray series for $65 a few yr. ago. Today, at amazon (same place I got it) is at $129

I thought these movie / tv series get cheaper as we go fwd. in time. I want to buy the X-files series too, but year after year, I can't find a good price at amazon,and I don't want to do ebay as I don't know if they are boot leg

Not sure how you got TNG Blu-ray for that price, that's a great deal! I think it launched at $99+ IIRC. It's on our Christmas list this year, same for X-Files. Both favorites for the woman and me.
 
I bought the entire Star Trek TNG Blu-ray series for $65 a few yr. ago. Today, at amazon (same place I got it) is at $129

I thought these movie / tv series get cheaper as we go fwd. in time. I want to buy the X-files series too, but year after year, I can't find a good price at amazon,and I don't want to do ebay as I don't know if they are boot leg
Low supply. I doubt they are making any more copies.
 
I bought the entire Star Trek TNG Blu-ray series for $65 a few yr. ago. Today, at amazon (same place I got it) is at $129

I thought these movie / tv series get cheaper as we go fwd. in time. I want to buy the X-files series too, but year after year, I can't find a good price at amazon,and I don't want to do ebay as I don't know if they are boot leg
The Blu-ray collection has been out-of-print for quite some time. The $129 price you saw was a third-party seller selling a used copy.
 
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