Something there doesn't make sense though. The idea that TNG-R's first 25 episodes alone cost more than $9.6 million, but all 176 episodes of DS9-R will cost only roughly twice that? That can't possibly be right. DS9-R's estimated $20 million cost divided by 176 is roughly $115,000 per episode. Using that as an extreme upper limit for a typical TNG episode, Season One of TNG must have cost a great deal less than $3 million.
Hmm, I'm not so sure that follows. Only truly spectacular Blu-ray sales might have led to that, but that was never in the cards. In any case, I suspect we're only going to get the other two shows if CBS can convince Amazon, Hulu, or Netflix to buy new licensing rights to some or all of their respective seasons as was done with TNG-R (its Amazon and HULU deals). CBS makes far more on these licensing deals than they ever could selling Blu-ray sets to a niche group of fans. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of dollars per episode.
As another example, earlier this year HULU paid CBS about $120 million for 300+ episodes of CSI, which works out to mid-six figures for each episode. If Seinfeld can command nearly $1 million per episode and CSI nearly half a million, then surely TNG is somewhere around half of that, so $200,000 - $250,000. I would expect DS9 would yet again be half of that, or $100,000 - $125,000. But maybe CBS hasn't yet been able to get the streaming companies on board at that price point. That's just a guess on my part, but it sounds plausible.
One thing's for sure, if people suddenly started watching a lot of DS9 or VOY on these services, those companies would be much more likely to fork over the cash to get them in HD, because they know their subscribers prefer HD.
