Paramount working on DS9 HD?

[Qonundrum]

*crosses fingers, toes, arms, legs and eyes*

I think that AI and upscaling technology has improved so much since the Next Gen remaster they can probably do the same with DS9 and a much lower price. And I say this as someone who knows almost nothing about AI or upscaling!

Mmmm... for special effects, the results of a server farm's algorithms are not as noticeable (Babylon 5 is quite good and truly retains its original release feel, while melding live action film that blow the videotape edit out of the water with true sharpness and color detail), but for live action the Artificial treatment still can't hold a candle beyond selective edge enhancement. The 35mms, which continue to slowly rot and - if not manufactured to ideal spec might succomb to vinegar rot sooner than expected, etc - hold exponentially more detail in terms of sharpness and color depth than a SD videotape transfer could ever begin to hold. Compare AI to the remastered film clips on the special blu-ray release. Native still blows AI out of the water and for all the same reasons. It's no contest. Even taking a scan and reducing resolution to SD size and the result still has comparatively more detail.

Even home AI systems like Topaz AI also require a fair bit of tweaking and testing, and not all scenes in each episode get augmented perfectly the same way and sometimes whole episodes need total redos. You'd probably spend more kWh cost in electricity bills in umpteen redos in playing with that than going to a legitimate high-quality source that still exists. The films exist, any remastering will pay for itself via blu-ray and streaming after a few years, and the audience is still there.

And, yep, as with TNG, people will bicker about DS9 allegedly being a double-dip that's somehow overpriced, with no clue as to the effort in the 35mm restoration, extras made, and how the MSRP for the blu-rays were lower than the original DVDs. People got a steal for TNG on that first day of release, never mind when prices dropped a few years after that.

 

[Tomalak]

“Slowly rot” is overdoing it. Film can last almost indefinitely if held in ideal conditions. The salt mine that Paramount use is as ideal as it comes.

 

[Qonundrum]

I keep reading the thread because I hope more people who have upgraded to HDTV and HD players will post about their experience - does everyone who has done that find DVDs unwatchable? I am not crazy about making my entire DVD collection obsolete overnight, and there are some that have no prospects of every being released in UHD.

They're not unwatchable, but having rewatched some DS9 and VOY, the PQ drop between series was always noticeable. Higher quality TVs with better image processors can compensate to an extent, but that can only go so far.

The biggest difference, along with raw pixel count (1920x480 progressive, versus 720x480 interlaced), would be color depth - especially the movies with HDR. Lighting like 1701's running lights and even big explosions in TWOK show so much more detail and depth than ever before, and that's a huge step up. Especially when most 4K releases have more deftly DNR levels applied as well as keep color palettes similar or the same to the original release, as opposed to altering it (read: 2000s and 2010s when regrading everything to teal/orange was a fad, such as the Superman Blu-Ray releases readily exemplify, and/or using DNR to remove too much noise and turn everyone into waxwork figures)).

Now imaging if TNG was restored using HDR and at 4K. It's easy to see why they chose 2K, as 4K just around the corner if not too new.

There's one teensy downer: Most modern films heavily reliant on CGI were mastered in 2k. Back when I did print media, the most anyone dared to do was taking a 4x6 @ 300DPI and stretching it to 8x10 at 150DPI because the grain and other issues get magnified in the process. DPI was the key factor and scanning at 8x10 at 300DPI (not quite the same as PPI but I'll be sloppy and use them interchangeably) required so much more space. The point being, the more one enlarges, the more trickery has to be done to hide the issues. TopazAI and other upscaling software can do selective sharpening and other tweaks fairly well, especially if the source material is already detailed and not interlaced to begin with...

...Compared to 480i->1080P (don't bother with 480i->4K, even with Topaz in 2023, yuck!!), going from 2k to 4k just renders things softer and still fairly good on its own but some edge enhancing will be done if possible. Like when ENT's blu-ray took the 35mm footage and melded it to 720P->1080P upscaled CGI and the result was, you guessed it, soft and blurry ship/battle visuals. Not bad by any objective measure, but still quite soft and lumpy at times. Like the sort of doodoo you want to tell the doc about because it might be IBD, pancreatitis, cancer somewhere, or otherwise other and generally unwanted afflictions.

 

[Qonundrum]

“Slowly rot” is overdoing it. Film can last almost indefinitely if held in ideal conditions. The salt mine that Paramount use is as ideal as it comes.

Melodramatic, I won't disagree. While the chance is fairly low, some film batches for some show somewhere will invariably have contamination as no manufacturing process is 100% identical. Regardless, they all age, anyhow. But eventually it's all going to succumb - think 100 to 200 years at best for professional grade film (consumer grade stuff definitely starts to go south a bit sooner). Even then, that's an estimate since film manufacturing hasn't been around for 400 years and do all estimates include all conceivable variables, so the point arguably remains valid in that we don't know if reality will hold up to those estimates, so my melodrama isn't completely misplaced. Logically, it makes more sense to preserve it in a digital format of the reasonably highest density (resolution and color gamut) while it's available.

At least it's in a salt mine and not a warehouse like what had burned down a decade ago...

 

[Ragitsu]

*grumbles about the forever-barred original Star Wars negatives*

 

[Tallguy]

*grumbles about the forever-barred original Star Wars negatives*

1) True. 2) Let's not start this again. Go grab your copy of 4K77 and be as happy as you can be. (It's SO PRETTY!)

 

[fireproof78]

Watches VHS and eats homemade popcorn.

Glorious.

 

[tomalak301]

I would love to get the HD DS9, but more than anything, my DVD packaging is falling apart so getting the new packaging would be a plus as well.

 

[Tomalak]

I've got the original Region 2 bomb-proof plastic clamshell cases. They'll be here long after I've decayed into nothing.

 

[Paul755]

Honestly, I’d be fine if they would just put the series (and Voyager) on blu-ray. Remastered or not. Those old DVD sets are expensive as hell.

 

[Uxi]

I hope so. DS9 is my second favorite after TOS. The 4k snippet from the documentary had me drooling on my 85 inch UHD TV as did the TOS movies in 4k Blu-ray.

 

[Ragitsu]

I've got the original Region 2 bomb-proof plastic clamshell cases. They'll be here long after I've decayed into nothing.

Are they Gulf War-era Game Boy tough?

Spoiler

 

[Tosk]

The durability of the UK DS9 cases is in perfect symmetry with the fragility of the US DS9 cases. Maybe there's some kind of Dorian Gray thing going on?

 

[JoseNoodles]

Are they Gulf War-era Game Boy tough?

Spoiler

I saw that Gameboy in person in the Manhattan Nintendo Store, across the room from the creepy StarFox puppets.

 

[SolarisOne]

That, and probably because CBS/Paramount realized that they can still make money off of a dead property.

They can definitely make money off of ME if they do this, at any rate.

 

[Ragitsu]

Don't let companies think they can turn you in order to generate a profit; they may consider your enthusiasm to be an open invitation.

 

[Dukhat]

They can definitely make money off of ME if they do this, at any rate.

Me too.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Me three.

 

[Lynx]

If they come up with HD or Bluray versions of DS9, I really hope that the quality is better than whhat it was on the DVD:s. I have had too much troubles with the DVD.s in recent years.

 

[David cgc]

I'm watching an interview with Bill Hunt, of the home video site "The Digital Bits," who has his ear to the ground about most things in that area, and the subject of the TMP director's edition and it's two-stage release of having a big debut on Paramount Plus (which fronted a lot of the money for the remaster) followed by a collector-focused disc release came up. There's a mention that it was so successful that "there are opportunities for future projects like that to happen." So, add that to the smoke starting to form around the DS9-R concept.

The conversation starts at about 40 minutes in, if the timecode in the link doesn't work. The relevant part is only a minute or so long.