When CBS remastered The Next Generation , they had to physically rescan the original film and rebuild every episode from scratch—a process that cost millions and, reportedly, did not yield the sales figures necessary to justify doing the same for DS9. Consequently, official streams on platforms like Amazon Prime or Netflix merely upscaled the blurry tape masters, resulting in a "soft" image with jagged edges and muddied textures.
The Quest for HD: Star Trek: Deep Space 9 AI Upscaling (2020–2021) star trek deep space 9 s01 ai upscale 1080p 2020 2021
Have you watched the AI upscale of DS9’s first season? Does it hold up against the original SD broadcast? Share your thoughts in the comments below. When CBS remastered The Next Generation , they
Season 1 of DS9, airing in 1993, suffered from the roughest image quality of the series. It featured heavy film grain, dark lighting in the Promenade, and muddy composite shots. Does it hold up against the original SD broadcast
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) , originally broadcast from 1993 to 1999, was produced on 35mm film but edited and mastered on standard-definition (480i) videotape, making a native HD remaster economically unviable for studios. Between 2020 and 2021, a fan-driven initiative employed commercial AI upscaling models (e.g., ESRGAN, Topaz Video Enhance AI) to produce a 1080p version of Season 1. This paper documents the methodology, evaluates the perceptual quality of the upscale (focusing on fine detail recovery, temporal stability, and artifact suppression), and discusses the ethical and preservation implications of AI-driven fan restoration.
The improvement is immediately noticeable. Textures on Starfleet uniforms, the gritty details of the Promenade, and even the Cardassian architecture pop with newfound clarity. The AI upscaling does a solid job of reducing compression artifacts and mosquito noise without scrubbing away all film grain. Edges are sharper, and background details—like the busy docking ring or Ops consoles—are now readable. For a first season that sometimes looked overly soft, this is a revelation. Colors are more stable, and black levels feel deeper, giving the station’s darker corridors a more atmospheric punch.
In 2020 and 2021, the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine fan community experienced a surge of independent AI-upscaling projects aimed at filling the gap left by Paramount's decision not to officially remaster the series in HD. Because DS9 (and Voyager ) was mastered on standard-definition videotape despite being shot on 35mm film, a true remaster would require rescanning original negatives and recreating thousands of low-resolution CGI shots—an effort estimated at approximately $20 million per series. The AI Upscale Boom (2020–2021)
