I love the idea of upscaling DS9. Seeing some of those battles from the Dominion War in the finest possible resolutions is drool-worthy!
Still better off re-rendering the original assets at a higher resolution (if they still exist), or digging up the 35mm film negs and scanning them at the highest possible resolution.
Not to mention color fidelity, telecine from film to NTSC videotape strips out a ton of color and shadow detail along with resolution detail, and one can simulate a gradient between color A and color B only so far. Reproducing the intricate clothing patterns is an even bigger chore.
I'll save the drool for 35mm remastering. Anything else is going to have telltale signs, for which articles still come out from time to time on releases where they upscaled instead of scanned and the results were horrific. Even more so on a larger TV ( >40") where it's going to invariably stand out... indeed, here's an old article from 2024 (AD):
https://www.indiewire.com/news/business/i-love-lucy-blu-ray-restoration-fail-being-fixed-1235075028/
It appeared that when upscaling the original show’s image quality to HD, the process inadvertently created an eye-popping moment in which background characters’ faces suddenly became bizarrely enhanced.
Also note that the article also states a fix is being worked on, so that's another worthy plus.
Now to be fair and this is where it gets good,
Though the show was originally shot on 35mm, the restoration process on the whole combined some of the original 35mm negatives, 16mm film reels that were sent to network offices, and even some more recent video tape, which accounts for why it was necessary to both restore the original footage and upscale the picture quality. The company source says as many as four minutes of material were missing from some episodes, with other reels requiring restoration of warped, dirty, or scratched frames to get everything looking consistent. It’s a surprise considering how famous the show has remained in the decades since its release.
The paragraph tells us of another chilling reality: The films, even under proper storage, have a short lifespan before warping, dirt, fading (for color), etc, will hamper or wreck them. Never mind "the vinegar effect" (acetate film base degradation). Get them scanned when/if possible. Hell, most of us would pay $20 more per season, but as DS9's fanbase is lower than TNG's, TNG's prices in stores always seemed to be 33% lower than MRSP ($80 vs $120 respectively, and even at $120 they were a bigger deal than many would think.)
The paragraph also, as key detail, states set had been remastered from the films proper for the mostp art, but where film was lost or irretrievable, they had no choice but to take lesser quality sources and upscale those. Even then, using the wrong settings, or settings set too high, in Topaz Video AI or whatever will indeed cause the bug-eye weirdness shown in the article. So props to the blu-ray makers for doing the best possible effort in this, anyone who does this type of works knows the complexity, and I will be buying that set because it'll mop the floor with the SD DVDs, even if a handful of scenes look "different" - you'd think that with TNG and the handful of missing scenes, that
that would be self-explanatory regarding the vastly superior difference between proper scanning and upscaling lo-res material. But if Trekkies want a quick and dirty run of SD through an upscaler and pretend it's more than what it is... just don't watch the clips from the DS9 documentary next to them because it'll be night vs day over which looks better all over again. It's also why all those YT videos don't bother comparing upscaled scenes to the actual HD releases. Now those I'd love to see...
I find it takes up more time than I'd like to fill out many details there, time I'd rather spend working on the project itself.
