The YouTube version looks more like they were playing with saturation and other color settings, but it’s still looks terrible (and it even looks softer than the DVD, which is most likely from the software deinterlace).Interesting. I just watched "One" on Netflix, and wow, it looks heinously bad.
Grabbed these from Netflix - even in that scene, it's only some shots, such as the one of Worf, that aren't on par with the rest of the remastering:
A simple kicking up the contrast a few points provides a noticeable improvement. And this is without any AI to provide smart upscaling:
In other words: don't throw your DS9/VOY DVD sets out!
As for some random fan's homemade AI upscaling, as seen on YouTube...
Not compared to the Netflix stream, it doesn't! NF on the left, upscaled AI (re-compressed to YT) on the right:
DVD cap from TrekCore on the left, AI upscale via YT on the right:
If a home computer working with brand-new software can cook up this kind of improvement now, just imagine what professional equipment might manage in a few years with selective true HD scans of film shots here and there to learn from!
Voyager on Netflix vs DVD quality?
- Thread starter Lt. Munro
- Start date
As for me, I prefer to buy the DVD:s and pay once for them than having to pay Netflix a monthly sum for watching.
Not to mention the unreliability of streaming. Not so fun to decide to watch a series and then, being half way in it encountering a message which says something like "This series is no longer available".
The small differences in picture quality are irrelevant for me, at least for now.
Not to mention the unreliability of streaming. Not so fun to decide to watch a series and then, being half way in it encountering a message which says something like "This series is no longer available".
The small differences in picture quality are irrelevant for me, at least for now.
For DS9 and Voyager, DVD is the way to go for ultimate video quality right now.
Well. I don't think one or two comments by a couple of posters on a Star Trek forum is enough to determine if Netflix is dying or not TBH.
I brought up some of these same clips in earlier threads on this subject.
It's clear that AI remasters fall far short of proper ones - note how many characters appear to have metallic eyes and teeth with painted skin and clothes - but it still represents a significant improvement over dull fuzzy video transfers.
It's clear that AI remasters fall far short of proper ones - note how many characters appear to have metallic eyes and teeth with painted skin and clothes - but it still represents a significant improvement over dull fuzzy video transfers.
Didn't they actually compress/reduce the quality of the streams last year because so many people were using it? At least in Europe due to some governments being concerned about the amount of traffic. I'm not sure that's still the case though.
Unless bandwidth is so constrained, PQ isn't much of an issue. But I've had SD material get soft and blocky, which isn't going to bode well for HD material given its much higher bandwidth needs.
Monthly leasing for access to every last show is otherwise kinda nice. But everyone having to pony up $xx/mo is not viable either. A set collection of shows, of which many aren't streamed right now or might be regularly, still has home media being the more viable choice - and, yes, $40 for a season seems like much except if one is paying $xx/mo, one eventually makes up for it and then some. Depends on what shows one likes, there is no set complete consistency for either paradigm (streaming vs home video).
It's amazing what the ycan do with a compressed DVD in deinterlacing, mpeg artifacting noise removal, selective edge enhancing based on patterning and perceived surface type (e.g. hair vs skin vs shirt vs wall vs computer console vs bowl of ice cream Troi's spooning, etc), and so on...
But, nope. Same issues as always. Selective overly-done and artificial-looking edge enhancement for that nice awkward and inconsistent half-melted wax mannequin look that's almost as comical as it does surreal - not to mention the haloing that's par for the course with any unsharp masking and other "AI". Color gamut is appreciably improved but rest assured that typical inaccuracies are still there. A joke or not, NTSC still stands for "Never the Same Color" still had its origins based in irrevocable truths.
And, yes, I do use Topaz "AI" products. For the right venues and handling, a lot of fun tweaking can be done. Especially for landscape work where it's easier to feign detail for buildings where they don't look like large lego toys. But let's see it undo film->VT transfer issues like contrast bleed and crush. Look up Babylon 5's film restoration comparisons and wince because the visuals speak for themselves and no AI can begin to come close. On every level. Because "tech" still isn't there... and won't be. One can improve or all sleight-of-hand to source material, depending on the quality of it. Apply the same techniques to the actual filmstrips and you could turn a 2K scan into 4K and almost nobody would notice. I wouldn't... especially when most modern films, even sold as 4K, are already upscaled 2K. 2K native has more information than deinterlaced 480i ever will in a single frame in which to extrapolate, and back in the days of print media you WILL find designers who could get away with enlarging a photo from an 100ISO film neg, halving its DPI from 300 to 150, and eke out enough... now try a 1600ISO film neg of the same image and do the same processing and it'll still look murky...
Having seen the episode recently, the episode's emotional visceral content does still hold up. Barclay's assumptions on where the ship may have been were impressive, given the number of hops and skips and jumps and other tweaks Voyager had done over the years...
This. No highly variable bitrate that causes soft murky imagery and no artificial visual tweaking that leads to comical waxwork figure looks -- remember when people complained about Star Trek VI on blu-ray about excessive DNR leading to everyone looking like wax figures? Only difference is, they were processing from a HD scan and shrinking resolution as opposed to taking a third rate source and trying to massage it, using some of the same tools (e.g. DNR to get rid of noise and compression and, oops, film grain too in the process... ) The sad part was, I wasn't that much of a complainer over STVI's release... mostly about how TWOK got re-scanned and remastered from the source negs but none of the others and that did show...
TNG Bluray definitely is superior overall to Netflix HD streams. Its not massive mind. But definitely noticeable and that includes sound quality.
For the DS9 and VOY streams. They are SD and so are the DVDS. The quality between Netflix and DVD is not really that different IMO. Again, DVD has the edge but only by a smidge and honestly most folk wouldn't be able to tell much if any difference.
VOY IMO actually offers a better picture IMO compared with DS9. Specifically the earlier seasons of DS9 offers up some really had picture quality. It's really quite awful at times on a bigger HD screen tv especially. VOY is a bit more clearer and surprisingly so at times. I can only think this may be because Voyager was the flagship show of the franchise and was produced at a slightly higher standard but who knows?
But overall the quality is not that different in any case.
I'd honestly say Netflix is good for the convenience of not having to keep loading up discs and navigating the annoying dvd menus lol.
For the DS9 and VOY streams. They are SD and so are the DVDS. The quality between Netflix and DVD is not really that different IMO. Again, DVD has the edge but only by a smidge and honestly most folk wouldn't be able to tell much if any difference.
VOY IMO actually offers a better picture IMO compared with DS9. Specifically the earlier seasons of DS9 offers up some really had picture quality. It's really quite awful at times on a bigger HD screen tv especially. VOY is a bit more clearer and surprisingly so at times. I can only think this may be because Voyager was the flagship show of the franchise and was produced at a slightly higher standard but who knows?
But overall the quality is not that different in any case.
I'd honestly say Netflix is good for the convenience of not having to keep loading up discs and navigating the annoying dvd menus lol.
^^this
Streaming bitrates have improved a lot, but still don't quite match. And that's on a good day. Despite my own bickering, there's still a lot to be impressed by. A few more tweaks and improvements, along with a couple other issues, not to mention showing videotape material in native 29.97 format instead of the frame stripping and 16:9 recompositing that looks as soft as it does bad, and streaming will be the ideal platform. Maybe in a decade or so?
DVD size Streaming on a good day and with the right provider, is rather greater than the 28Mbit/second rate many streamed HD shows/movies are said to be streamed in. (Blu-Ray is mid-30s, based on one video-centric forum I'd read a couple weeks ago, so the numbers are bound to vary...) Last I recall, most DVDs are 7Mb/s... DVDs still do offer full 4:3 frame video in most cases, and with no frame stripping/phony film effect... the copies of the masters used for streaming could be refreshed by now...?
Or technological improvements, but both spinoffs were shot on film and edited on tape. Maybe compression encoding algorithms had improved between the time DS9 was encoded for streaming and Voyager after that?
Convenience factor is definitely there and there's much I've found to appreciate. But there are a few cases where it's such a good movie and for collecting/frequent rewatching, the added quality is jaw-droppingly amazing...
They cut the horizontal resolution in half? Is it any better on Paramount Plus? (I'm in the UK, and I have a choice of streaming services.)
I've always found the Berman Trek's picture quality to be a bit fuzzy at times. Where as the original series images are nothing less than perfect on my DVD set! TNG even when I watched on rental VHS back in 88 always had a less than spectacular reproduction, almost as if it was done on a poor video camera! The Bridge scenes always looked good and clear but jungles and darkened forests forget it, same with DS9 and to some extent Voyager! Picard though is crystal clear on FlixTor! 
JB
JB
No. The streaming services world wide all use the same files.
Think of the resolutions as a ladder. It would look like this:
4K
1080p
1080i
720p
576p (PAL/SECAM)
480p (NTSC)
576i (PAL/SECAM)
480i (NTSC)
240p
The DS9 and Voyager D2 Composite Masters are in 480i. Problem is NO streaming service uses 480i (same with 1080i), because it’s interlace-video. Yes your streaming device may convert the video to interlace, however with most devices, if your TV’s maximum is 1080i, they’ll convert it to 720p. But with 480i/576i material, before it’s even uploaded it needs to be converted to a progressive signal. And the cheapest and fastest way is to just import it into a software editing suite, and tell you to spit out a 480p file—but that removes half-your vertical resolution. Also with the DS9/Voyager files, because CBS/Paramount were using the DVD files, the videos were already compressed for DVD and then they recompressed them for streaming. So they’ve taken a second hit to quality that way.
You want to see DS9 & Voyager in their best —-just buy a cheap upconverting DVD/Blu-Ray player and watch the DVD’s. The hardware in those players do a much better job than what CBS/Paramount have done.
Thanks. I seem to get better quality on P+. Maybe they use a higher bit rate, which might actually be bad news for the environment. I've also caught DS9 on an HD broadcast, with even better image quality. However, I am of the understanding that uk broadcast and dvds are subject to 'PAL speedup,' running at 25fps instead of 24. But I don't know. How did they originally convert the NTSC 480i 60hz footage into PAL 576i 50hz? You would think a conversation to 480p 24hz, matching the film camera output, would be easier.
Also, I've seen an American youtuber who refuses to watch DS9 or Voyager because of the image quality. He thinks they might work on a CRT, but never a flatscreen. Is this true?
You have to remember that all the TV master tapes (both NTSC & PAL) were created in the 1990’s. And, unlike SeaQuest DSV or Babylon 5 where the producers had to deliver film masters (and in the case of SeaQuest, the film masters were used for the International PAL/SECAM masters, while the NTSC masters were the rough cut versions that went to air, and now SeaQuest could be remastered into 1080p or even 4K), the producers of DS9 and Voyager were not required too. So the only transfer the film had was to 480i 30-frame-per-second NTSC D2 Composite Video tape (and we are talking true composite video, not Y/C composite like VHS or S-VHS where it would split a composite signal into a color and separate black & white channel on the tape, but composite like Laserdisc), unless it was model/sfx shots, then those went on D1 NTSC 30-frame Component Video Tape to preserve quality during all the generations of compositing that were required. (And later on, the CGI shots were output to D1 NTSC tape.). However, then everything from the D2 and D1 tapes were edited together on one D2 NTSC Composite videotape and that NTSC master became to basis for ALL NTSC/PAL/SECAM tapes. And in 1994, 60% of stations in the USA got their copies from a satellite feed that they then copied to whatever video tape they used (Betacam SP, S-VHS). The other 40% got their copies on 3/4” U-Matic. In Canada it was probably the same amount, however in other countries like the UK, they might’ve got their masters from the satellite (which would’ve been sent in 480i) and the station would’ve handled the conversion themselves or Paramount would’ve run them through a machine that was specially design to convert and upscale the NTSC 480i 30-frame to PAL/Secam’s 576i 25-frame (and in the case of SECAM, they probably used the PAL master to create the SECAM master by running it through another special box that was designed to convert the PAL color into the SECAM color).
And all of this conversion would’ve most likely been handled in the analog, composite domain, even if they were going from D2 NTSC to D2 PAL, since they were most likely using equipment from the 1970’s-1980’s to do the conversions (D2 tape was originally created with the intention of being able to slip it into analog set ups without having to spend millions to change everything over to digital to work with D1 properly). And stations that air DS9 & Voyager in HD are still using SD tapes from the 90’s and upconverting them to 720p or 1080i. As for Paramount plus, maybe they upconverted the files to 720p and they are streaming them in 720p and using that to make them look a little better at a slightly higher bitrate. For years, even on broadcast TV, because of compression issues, 720p has generally been considered equivalent to an upconverted DVD. 720p is usually broadcast or streamed around the 11-to-13 Mbps at a variable bitrate. DVD’s max bitrate is 9.2 Mbps, with most DVD’s are encoded with a variable bitrate in the 5.0-7.0 Mbps range.
So, in order to get better video for DS9 & Voyager, both shows need to be re-edited and have the camera negatives rescanned in either 1080p or 4K and edited that way. As for the current files, they were made 20 years ago and were using 3-D comb filters that were top-of-the-line back then, however you can get better color separation on your modern TV’s (if they have a yellow composite connector or in the Uk, the composite SCART connector) by connecting your DVD player by composite. It forces the video back into composite and then your modern TV’s 3-D comb filter will give you a better color separation. Another option is to track down the DS9 & Voyager Laserdiscs that were released (as these are just analog composite copies of the digital composite masters, so they never went through a separation circuit) and connect a Laserdisc player by composite and you’ll get the current ultimate video that way.
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