The 2020 AI upscaling project for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Shot on 35mm film but edited on Standard Definition (SD) video tape (480i), DS9—alongside Voyager—was locked in a technological prison. When Paramount refused to fund a full HD remaster (citing the $20 million+ price tag and poor sales of the TNG Blu-rays), the future looked bleak. That is, until 2020, when a tech-savvy fan asked a radical question: What if we let Artificial Intelligence do the work? star trek deep space 9 s01 ai upscale 4k 2020
However, the 2020 upscale movement also highlighted the limitations of AI. Because the software is essentially hallucinating detail based on patterns, it occasionally struggled with: The 2020 AI upscaling project for Star Trek:
The specific project targeting Deep Space 9’s first season in 2020 was spearheaded by a small team of fan restorationists (often operating under aliases like "Joy’s of Trek" or "CaptRobau" on forums). Their goal was audacious: take the low-bitrate DVD source of Season 1, and run it through a sophisticated AI pipeline to produce a true 4K (3840x2160) upscale. However, the 2020 upscale movement also highlighted the
(DS9) Season 1 to 4K was a saga of fan dedication filling a void left by the studio. While The Next Generation received a full, scan-from-film restoration, DS9 was left in standard definition because its heavy use of early CGI was rendered at low resolution, making a "proper" 4K remaster prohibitively expensive for CBS.
Enter the project known simply as "Star Trek Deep Space 9 S01 AI Upscale 4K 2020."