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'Star Trek: Voyager' gets an unofficial 4K remaster thanks to AI
Please state the nature of your upscaling emergency..
As with Deep Space Nine , Star Trek: Voyager is unlikely to ever get an official high-resolution remaster. The effects were shot on video rather than added to film after the fact, making it much harder to upgrade the quality than it was for The Next Generation . However, an unofficial project might get relatively close. Series fan Billy Reichard has started processing Voyager with a machine learning program that upgrades that '90s era image quality as much as possible. You won't forget that the show was made for tube TVs given the aspect ratio, but the AI is surprisingly effective -- it produces something you probably wouldn't mind watching on an idle afternoon if you're a Star Trek devotee.
The effort is time-consuming at about six hours for an episode, and the necessary software is both expensive and tricky to work with. Voyager had variable frame rates that make audio sync a pain, as you can see in the sample clip below. It could be a long, long time before you can see Janeway and crew in 4K glory. Still, Reichard hopes to give every episode the AI treatment. Just don't count on CBS sanctioning this, let alone making it officially available.
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Watch Star Trek Voyager in 4K, thanks to AI upscaling
AI goes boldly where no official release has gone before
![star trek voyager remastered hd star trek voyager remastered hd](https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/ytzwASMFdt4Qv8Tjj7nhxV-320-80.jpg)
Binged your way through Amazon 's Picard ? Looking for some more 4K trekking to tide you over until Picard Season 2 engages? Fans of classic Star Trek series Star Trek Voyager may be in luck then.
Star Trek fan Billy Reichard has kicked off a project to get the 90s era show remastered in 4K , using an AI machine learning engine.
Taking six hours per episode to process, Reichard has produced five episodes so far, working from a DVD source. Take a look at the early results in the YouTube upload below:
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Troubleshooting
As you can see, the results are pretty special. As a show that kicked off in 1995, Star Trek Voyager's 4:3 ratio can't be extended for modern widescreen displays – but the machine learning engine does a great job of sharpening the existing picture and interpreting further details than were present in the original.
The main issue is audio syncing, as Voyager wasn't filmed at a fixed frame rate – which Reichard's method can't automatically fix, and thus needs manual tweaking.
Will Star Trek Voyager license holders CBS allow this project to continue? It's unlikely, but it would be a shame to see it shut down, as an official remaster would be difficult to achieve. With its effects shot on video rather than added afterwards, touching up the original source would be a painstaking job. For now, Reichard's glimpse at what might be is the best we're likely to get.
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Gerald is Editor-in-Chief of iMore.com. Previously he was the Executive Editor for TechRadar, taking care of the site's home cinema, gaming, smart home, entertainment and audio output. He loves gaming, but don't expect him to play with you unless your console is hooked up to a 4K HDR screen and a 7.1 surround system. Before TechRadar, Gerald was Editor of Gizmodo UK. He is also the author of 'Get Technology: Upgrade Your Future', published by Aurum Press.
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STAR TREK Fans Are Upgrading VOYAGER and DEEP SPACE NINE in HD
In a 4K, high definition world, it is sometimes painful to watch our old favorite television series in blurry standard definition. This is especially true for several of the Star Trek series from the ’90s. But thanks to a report from i09 , we’ve learned that some fans are taking matters into their own hands when it comes to bringing Star Trek: Voyager to HD. Or, at least as close as we may ever get to HD.
![star trek voyager remastered hd Youtube Video](https://img.youtube.com/vi/V1IXc1thXX8/sddefault.jpg)
But over the past year, several tech savvy fans have figured out a way to bring scenes from the shows to HD. Most recently, Trek fan Billy Reichard , has started converting clips from Star Trek: Voyager with a machine learning program, one which upgrades the standard definition image quality as much as humanly possible. Granted, it’s not true HD. But it is pretty darn close, and miles better than the fuzzy standard definition episodes that are currently out there.
This same process was done for Deep Space Nine last year, by another fan. A YouTuber by the name of CaptRobau made several proof-of-concept videos last years. As you can see in the video below, the difference between the old footage and the machine learning enhanced clips is like night and day. Like Voyager , it’s not true high definition either. But it is far crisper and detailed image than the series has in its current form. To the eyes of all but the most scrutinizing fans, it would be a huge step up.
![star trek voyager remastered hd Youtube Video](https://img.youtube.com/vi/hInQkqmjn48/sddefault.jpg)
So why did The Next Genration and the original ’60s series get a proper HD Blu-ray release, but the more recent shows got left out in the cold? The reasons are a bit complex. Although all of the first four Star Trek shows were shot on 35mm film, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine and Voyager were all edited on videotape. This was the cheaper way of producing television in a timely fashion back in the day. But it also meant that those shows were not protected for any future high-def presentation.
The original Star Trek was shot and cut on film, so a high def restoration was possible early on. But for TNG , it was a long and expensive three year process, where every frame of film was reedited and all the effects re-composited. This was initially done for Blu-rays, but those remastered episodes have since shown up in syndication and on streaming. It was the high water mark for how one does a TV series remastering. But it was very time consuming, and also very expensive.
![star trek voyager remastered hd Youtube Video](https://img.youtube.com/vi/rfYkloL3xbk/sddefault.jpg)
Those TNG Blu-rays didn’t sell the way that CBS Home Video wanted, and plans to perform the same miracle surgery on Deep Space Nine and Voyager were cancelled. Those shows are even more problematic to recreate in HD, due to the fact that most of the effects for both series were created using early CGI. And a lot of those files are simply lost now. Fans then came to the crushing realization that these two beloved Trek shows would forever remain in the standard definition past. But now, the advent of machine learning software has possibly changed all that.
So will these fan efforts prove that a proper machine learning remaster of DS9 and Voyager is imminent? It’s still a long and painstaking process. But if fans can do it in their own homes, it can certainly be done on a larger scale by the company that owns them. Even though the gigapixel software is new and costly, it probably is nowhere near as expensive and time consuming a process it took to do TNG . Even if it’s not for Blu-ray, which is sadly a shrinking industry, one thinks CBS would want to future-proof these two series for streaming. Hopefully, the right folks are paying attention, and fans will have both Voyager and Deep Space Nine in a format as close to HD as we can get.
Featured Image: CBS
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VOY Doc Announces Crowdfunding Goals To Remaster Original ‘Star Trek: Voyager’ Footage In HD
![star trek voyager remastered hd](https://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/voydochd-head-777x437.jpg)
| March 17, 2021 | By: TrekMovie.com Staff 38 comments so far
The untitled Star Trek: Voyager documentary which launched a crowdfunding campaign at the beginning of the month had already broken fundraising records in its first week. Today it passed another stretch goal and finally announced intentions to include footage from Voyager remastered in HD.
On Wednesday the Voyager documentary being developed by 455 Films, makers of several previous Star Trek docs, passed their seventh stretch goal of $750,000 pledged, with over 7,300 backers. With this milestone achieved, they announced three new stretch goals. If they reached $825,000 they will have enough to remaster “some” of the footage from Star Trek: Voyager into high definition, and with $900,000 they will have enough to remaster all of the footage used in the doc.
There is a caveat noted on the campaign page that while this is the intent of the 455 Films it still requires the permission and support of CBS who own the rights to Star Trek: Voyager . CBS did work with the 455 to remaster footage for the DS9 documentary What We Left Behind (see below), so hopefully the same can be done with Voyager .
![star trek voyager remastered hd](https://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/ds9doc-andy-sd2-640x484.jpg)
In a statement released on Monday before the new stretch goals were announced, Executive Producer and Director of this Documentary David Zappone said:
“The entire Voyager Documentary team and Cast of Star Trek Voyager continue to be amazed and grateful to the fans of Star Trek for their overwhelming support of this documentary. We have many more surprises in store over the next couple weeks before the campaign wraps, including working with CBS on exploring the possibility of taking select standard definition Voyager series scenes and transcoding them to a higher resolution.”
The third new stretch goal announced on Wednesday is set for $1 million and is a bit of a mystery. It is listed as an “exclusive never before seen Voyager surprise,” and it has the same caveat requiring the cooperation of CBS. So it’s likely this means the inclusion of some footage that has not been released before, even on home video.
There are still 15 days remaining on the campaign on Indiegogo .
![star trek voyager remastered hd](https://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/voydocstretch10-640x247.jpg)
New stretch goals announced
In addition to the stretch goals, the doc team also announced some new perks.
Here's new perk #1 that's just been unlocked for reaching Stretch Goal #7! What do you think? This awesome new shirt and the other three new perks are available NOW here: https://t.co/a8Z6v0XCH1 #tuvok #StarTrekVoyager #StarTrek #vulcan pic.twitter.com/XhMa1TOCqy — The Voyager Documentary (@voydocumentary) March 17, 2021
New Perk #2 is a guided tour of the famous Santa Monica Pier (featured in Voyager episode, "Future's End") and the beautiful Getty Center (several scenes in Star Trek into Darkness) with GARRETT WANG and CHASE MASTERSON! Check out all four new perks here: https://t.co/gRWWh4UXgW pic.twitter.com/ZQR5xmEjVa — The Voyager Documentary (@voydocumentary) March 17, 2021
VOY Doc Star Trek Cruise panel Thursday
Star Trek: The Cruise will be running a virtual live Q&A event with the team behind the documentary, which will debut never-before-seen clips from the forthcoming film. The event will take place on both Facebook and YouTube on March 18 at 8:00 pm ET
VOY Doc Director on TrekMovie podcast Friday
Voyager documentary producer and co-director David Zappone will be the guest on this week’s TrekMovie.com podcast All Access Star Trek . That episode will be available on this site and wherever you get your podcasts on Friday morning.
If you have suggestions for questions to ask David Zappone, you can submit them below before noon ET on Thursday.
To support the doc visit the Indigogo page .
Visit the official site at voyagerdocumentary.com , or follow VOY Documentary on Twitter , Instagram , and Facebook .
Find more news and analysis for Star Trek documentaries .
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Amazing news all around. I’m glad this project has gotten such a huge response and they can do so much more with the documentary. But none of this is a surprise, Voyager is still a very popular show and sounds like it still gets a lot of big rewatches by the fanbase while attracting new fans at the same time. Now with Janeway back on Prodigy it will get even more fans in time and build on its popularity in the coming years!
Dang, they want almost $300k more than DS9 needed to get HD remasters? I begrudge them nothing, the more you have, the more you can do, and I look forward to this.
But it’s still a little frustrating how DS9 has gone right back to middle child status again.
I wouldn’t over think it. It’s just a documentary and Voyager is probably getting more money because of how great the DS9 doc turned out and more fans are confident their money is going to something worthwild. In other words if VOY documentary came first then it’s possible the DS9 documentary would get more money as well if that was very successful.
@Tiger2 that’s a great way of looking at it.
If I’m honest I saw the news about the VOY doc making more than the DS9 doc and, as a huge fan of DS9, I must admit to being a bit irked by the fact that DS9 seemed to be getting the thin end of the wedge in terms of fan love once again.
But I think you’re absolutely right here – the DS9 doc came out so very well (who doesn’t cry when they watch it? I know I do!) that I think it’s persuaded more folks this time to donate their money to a similar effort for VOY.
If only this would result in HD remasters of DS9 (and VOY for those who want it…!) we can but hope!
I don’t understand why DS9 dosen’t get the love it deserves. For me season 3 to 7 is the best star trek that exists up to this day. It was way ahead of it’s time in regards to storytelling. I do hate the double fist punches and Sisko’s over acting at times but man did the writing staff did an amazing job. The acting, the vilains, the drama, the space combats,… it was one hell of a saga. The season finale was a bit of a let down.
Voyager had a very good first season and lots of potentiel. But after that everyone bacame friends and it went back to the old formula. I beleive Voyager to be the cheesiest of them all. Still ok though.
Agreed. It was light years ahead of its time in terms of serialised storytelling as well.
Tbf I also think the first couple of seasons were good too – I would argue that Ds9 has the strongest first season of any trek show.
I would also say that ds9 had better antagonists than any other trek show as well – particularly Winn, who still makes me grind my teeth now! But combined with Dukat, Weyoun, the female changeling, and the various Jem’Hadar who showed up over the years, DS9 is (for me) the clear winner in terms of developed baddies.
Don’t get me wrong, VOY isn’t bad. I would say when VOY was done well, it was done very well. But when it was done poorly we got space salamanders or rogue Irish holograms. I suppose much of the fandom likes the familiar routine of TOS and TNG – crew on a ship, go places, do shenanigans, move on.
Ds9 went out of its way to break that mould – and did it really well, I thought. Although I do have to say that I loved the finale. That final shot of Jake and Kira makes me tear up to this day. I thought (unlike any other series finale) ds9 actually wrapped things up really well – foreshadowing the finale to BSG years later (another finale I enjoyed immensely!).
If I was to name a successor to ds9 now I’d actually say LDS (believe it or not!). I enjoy the exploration of the mundane as well as the focus on a non-hero ship and crew, and the humour that is present in LDS, as it reminds me of what ds9 brought to the table.
If only ds9 could shake the associations of being “dark” (which it wasn’t) and “boldly going nowhere” (show me another trek show where single civilisations were explored to the extent of the Bajorans, dominion, cardassians, and Klingons – did we explore the hirogen culture? Or the ocampans? Or the space hobbits? Or species 3.14159? Nope…!) then I think more folks would see ds9 for the jewel that it is.
Anyway imma step down off my soapbox now – this is becoming a speech…!
I think that’s it. Also, just speaking for myself, I simply missed out on supporting the DS9 doc just because I procrastinate and so on; it has nothing to do with how much I like the show. I love Voyager , but I love DS9 even more – it’s in a three-way tie with TOS and TNG for my favorite Trek series – yet I didn’t support the DS9 doc, but I am supporting the Voyager one, simply because I regret missing out on supporting the DS9 one.
Totally agree Tiger2. Such a great vibe after watching What We Left Behind. I can’t wait for this one!
Lovely way to see it!
I was surprised to see the 150k price tag to remaster all scenes they include in the doc. In the end, this will probably only amount to a few minutes of footage in total. Scaling that up to about 175 episodes for a whole 7-season show would mean something in the range of $50 million or more.
I think it’s $150K simply because they think the fans will give it to them and I think they are right.
So, my opinion only, but I am skeptical that this is really based on how much it will cost them to do it. I think that hey should easily be able to do that for the total they have already collected without having to ask for this.
remastering and restoring Star Trek will be an expensive project for Paramount/CBS. They only have to do Star Trek I, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX and X in 4K. And Voyager and Deep Space Nine for 2k. Wrath of Khan was done years ago in 4K HDR and never received a physical UHD disc release.
One might wonder if they are “fattening their belts” in terms of the salaries they are paying themselves on this one versus the first DS9 one?
Kids gotta eat and the mortgage needs to get paid, and I would conjecture that the DS9 one probably was done with a lot of unpaid extra work and was more of a labor of love, but this time, especially given COVID, they simply need the cash, and now that that see the fan response, why not self-justify the need to “pad” this?
It’s human nature. Most of us would be doing the same thing, and we would self-justify it as needed.
Its probably because more people are aware of it than were for the DS9 doc.
I’m one of them… I had no idea about the DS9 doc until about a month before it’s release. I saw a trailer on youtube and immediately pre-ordered it on xbox live.
Had I known about the crowdfunding part of have contributed. I bet that’s what’s going on here.
Keep in mind that they likely used the DS9 doc as a learning experience. Maybe they found the HD remastering was more costly than anticipated and are applying that knowledge to properly fund this one.
Frankly, I like the remastering, but in a crowdfunded doc, i’d rather they skip it. Spend all that money on more cast and crew interviews, visits to prop houses, and a longer run time. Heck, use overflow to fund the inevitable ENTERPRISE documentary.
1MM might be a tough one….but I’ve been wrong with all my other guesses. Good luck!!
Looks like they hit 1 million + already
$808k as of now.
Oh, I must have misread.
I see $1,018,456 on the fundraising page.
Are you Canadian by any chance? The Indiegogo page seems to convert amounts to local currency. So I’m seeing Euro. Maybe what you’re seeing is Canadian dollars?
Ahhh, that is it. I don’t recall the indiegogo page converting currency during the ds9 fundraiser.
For a million, I hope they can do a 30 minute, season 8 or 2 decades later animated episode.
That is way beyond the amount of $ DS9 needed to do that. This sounds a tad “cash grabish” to me.
Alec Peters, what do you say? ;-)
what happened with Axanar? did it ever get made?
That’s fantastic but HD isn’t good enough. They should be doing it in 4k. The ai upscaler can do 4k better than it can do 1080p. The more pixels in the final output image the easier it is for the ai to find and refine detail.
I’ve done allot of my own experimenting, I’ve been upscaling DS9 to 4k. I’ve basically used some extra hardware I had and made myself a little render farm in my basement.
Its been churning out gorgeous 4k episodes of DS9 for weeks. I figure by June I should have the entire series finished at the current rate.
Honestly paramount should be using the same ai to do this and replace the horrid sub vhs quality episodes available on netflix, amazon etc. It would be cheap for them to do. The biggest hurdle is time but surely they have enough resources that they could do all 7 seasons in just a couple of weeks.
The money saved from not having to restore and clean up the footage could be spent on new CG effects. I mean come on… Those battles in DS9 in pristine 4k… It would be amazing.
What AI engine are you using?
CBS won’t let it happen. Don’t waste your money.
CBS did let it happen for the DS9 documentary. No reason to expect anything different for this one.
Probably, but that was before the merger, and Paramount lawyered up and shut down the Axanar fan production several years back. So that could impact this as far as how the new merged legal department views this.
That’s a completely different thing, though. Axanar used Trek elements without permission to make a Trek movie of their own and they tried to make money from it. The VOY documentary will officially license any excerpts they use from the show. That’s completely independent of whether they can remaster any clips in HD. The extra money they’re collecting now is to allow them to remaster those shots.
I got some questions for David and you guys which you can consider.
What about remastering the special effects and ship shots? I heard they are only on video and not on film, which would make remastering them difficult – is there a solution in sight?
And are you considering to use the help of artificial neural networks and deep learning in the remastering processes? I saw some fan-made footage of Star Trek and Babylon 5 which exceeded the traditional remastering results done by studios while being much cheaper. Is that an option to use (in addition perhabs)?
And what about jennifer Lien? Will she be a part of this?
Oh, and one more: I have some problems of legally watching the DS9 doc here in Europe with seemingly no way to stream it or buy it locally. The only way to acquire the Doc seems to be ordering and shipping the blueray from the US. Will this be handled differently for the Voyager doc? Maybe by buying it on Amazon Prime Video or Vimeo?
It’s easy to get legally in the UK. Amazon Prime are selling the digital version for only £3.99 at the moment.
I’m pleasantly surprised. I liked Voyager but didn’t realize it had such a fanbase.
Very happy and not surprised I mean Voyager has most of the top 10 episodes watched on Netflix. It was always my favorite series by far. I had to laugh when I seen people saying it would never do as good as DS9 obviously they couldn’t be serious. I hope they do alot of footage though for the amount of money they are getting. They should even redo a whole episode or two like the year of hell…
But it isn’t as good as ds9. It looks great but lacks substance in terms of characters and it’s premise
It a Netflix top ten because the Borg episodes
Fan Film Factor
Exploring the world of Star Trek fan films.
![star trek voyager remastered hd Fan Film Factor](https://fanfilmfactor.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/Header-main-3.jpg)
STAR TREK: VOYAGER documentary will include HD REMASTERING!
![star trek voyager remastered hd](https://fanfilmfactor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Voyager-doc-cover-2-1024x512.jpg)
It’s been a dream of fans ever since Paramount and later CBS Studios decided to remaster TOS and TNG using original film negatives and redone CGI effects to create HIGH DEFINITION version of all of those treasured episodes. These special editions looked glorious…unbelievably better than when they first aired on television in standard definition.
Sadly, the owners of Star Trek lost their enthusiasm for this expensive process of remastering after the completion of the seven season of TNG in late 2014. No announcements were ever made regarding similar projects for Deep Space Nine or Voyager , and as it’s now been nearly a decade since work began on the TNG remaster. With CBS putting all of its considerable financial resources into producing (currently) FIVE different first-run Star Trek series, it’s unlikely any other pre-CBS Trek series will be getting the remastering treatment.
But all hope is not completely lost…!
When IRA STEVEN BEHR and the folks at 455 Films were making the DS9 documentary WHAT WE LEFT BEHIND —which was initially crowd-funded back in 2017 and released the following year—they were disappointed with the low SD quality of the footage. They had hoped to spend some of the nearly 650K that they had raised in their Indiegogo remastering a few of the clips that they’d be including. But seeing the quality of those crisp and vibrant HD scenes only bummed them out whenever they saw a lower quality clip.
Unfortunately, the process for remastering is quite costly, both in terms of time and especially money. You have to look through seeming endless reels of raw film, find the takes you need, digitize those segments, and spend painstaking hours adjusting light levels, color balance, and a ton of other details. The results are amazing—they just cost a ton of money…
![star trek voyager remastered hd](https://fanfilmfactor.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/DS9-SD-HD-comparison-1024x405.png)
With nearly all of the money raised from their Indiegogo already accounted for, the folks behind the DS9 documentary held additional fundraisers to cover the costs of digitizing the rest of the more than 20 minutes of footage they were using, at one point even offering “sponsorships” of specific clips. In the end, the addition crowd-funding was successful, including live action scenes and some amazing remastered VFX sequences.
Now, it looks like Star Trek: Voyager might get the same HD treatment!
With ten days left, the Indiegogo for the new Voyager documentary by the same folks at 455 Films is already hundreds of thousands of dollars above their DS9 predecessor’s campaign. In fact, they’re nearing a MILLION DOLLARS (which will set a new record for crowd-funding a documentary film on Indiegogo).
There have been ample stretch goals—revealed one-at-a-time as previous stretch goals were unlocked—but when they crossed $750K, they revealed three more stretch goals, and two of them are for remastering footage…
![star trek voyager remastered hd](https://fanfilmfactor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Voyager-doc-3-1024x679.jpg)
Already, they’ve passed the first of these goals, with the next one in sight. It’s very possible that this documentary will indeed take in over $1 million in donations from nearly 10K backers. Click below if you’d like to be one of them…
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-star-trek-voyager-documentary
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2 thoughts on “STAR TREK: VOYAGER documentary will include HD REMASTERING!”
One thing you I’ve wondered, that you probably know the answer to, is how do they get hold of the raw film to remaster it? I guess there’s not a lot that Paramount can do with it, but are they really prepared to trust it to an outside party? Even one backed by considerable donations? Then there’s how much time it must take to dig out the film they need, given that they want to show specific clips. That’s a lot of access to their film vault that’s required. I suppose there’s a hefty insurance agreement involved to guard against screw ups.
Or maybe this is a non issue and I’m just over thinking it! 🙂
Oh, it’s totally as complicated as you imagine…and even more so, Alastair! There were behind-the-scenes features on the first couple of seasons of the the TNG remastered Blu-rays. They literally had to hunt through shelf after endless shelf of film reels (some mislabeled) looking for what they needed from each episode. Then they needed to find the correct take(s), and give them to CBS Digital to digitize and convert to HD computer files that could be edited together–from scratch!–back into the way the episodes looked to begin with. And that’s just for starters!
Here, watch this video for what came next…
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Why Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager May Never Get the HD Remaster They Deserve
Robert Meyer Burnett discusses the complications in releasing DS9 and Voyager in HD
![star trek voyager remastered hd](https://treknews.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/brian-wilkins-150x150.jpg)
The Original Series , The Next Generation and Enterprise are all available in high-definition on Blu-ray and streaming services. So, when will Deep Space Nine and Voyager be available in superior quality?
That’s a question we receive here at TrekNews.net on a regular basis. I’m talking every… single… time… we post something about either of those two shows, we inevitably get inundated with questions about it or receive tweets from readers asking why CBS is re-releasing both series on DVD, as opposed to on Blu-ray.
I get it. Believe me, I do. I’d LOVE to see both of those shows in HD. Could you imagine how great “It’s Only a Paper Moon” or “Endgame” would look in crisp high-def? I get excited just thinking about it. And I know many of you do, as well.
So, why aren’t these incredible shows getting the same treatment as the others? I recently reached out to the writer, director, producer, and editor of the incredible bonus features found on The Next Generation and Enterprise Blu-ray sets, Robert Meyer Burnett , to get some answers. Burnett was so heavily involved in the previous remastering projects, he seemed like the perfect source for answers to my burning questions.
If you’ve ever wondered about Deep Space Nine and Voyager on Blu-ray, sit back and relax as Burnett provides an enormous amount of detailed information that will most likely answer all of them.
TrekNews.Net: Over the course of the next few weeks, we’ll see CBS release complete series sets of both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager on DVD. With the remastering of Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: The Original Series now complete, why do you think CBS made the decision not to do the same with those shows at this time?
Robert Meyer Burnett : A complicated question with a simple answer; It takes way too much time and money to remaster DS9 and Voyager into HD.
But I have a longer and hopefully more comprehensive answer for you. Because even after eight years since The Original Series Blu-rays hit, there’s still a great deal of misunderstanding regarding the restoration of both TOS and TNG.
Until fairly recently, both motion pictures and TV were shot mostly on 35mm film — live television, news, talk shows, game shows, soap operas, etc., were shot on various video formats, and the difference from film was readily apparent. Some television used 16mm while certain event films were shot on 65mm, but for the most part, 35mm film was the industry standard.
35mm film has a resolution of about 20 megapixels or greater. Comparatively, NTSC video, used in North America and Asia, has basically 640 pixels by 480 scan lines of resolution… far, far, FAR less than the resolution of 35mm film.
Both motion pictures and TV used to be finished the same way. After being shot on film, that film was edited, the negative was cut and prints were struck from that cut negative. All visual effects, titling, etc., were also shot on film. Depending on the finishing process, the resolution of the 35mm film was retained in the cut negative. This cut negative, properly stored and cared for, was then put away until it was needed to either strike new prints or be scanned for use on television and home video.
It was the dark times, before the rise of HD and now UHD images, ALL movies, and television originating on film were scanned down to standard definition video resolution from their original negatives. NTSC resolution in North American and Asia. So a 20-megapixel original image was scanned down to 640-pixel x 480 line image, so we could all watch them on broadcast television, and later VHS and DVD. For over 50 years, the images we all saw on TV were really quite terrible, displaying a mere small fraction of the color and clarity contained in the original 35mm camera negatives.
![star trek voyager remastered hd Burnett holding the Enterprise](https://www.treknews.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/robert-meyer-burnett.jpg)
Burnett holding the Enterprise model constructed by Greg Jein for the Deep Space Nine episode “Trials and Tribble-ations”
But most people didn’t know this. Or even care. Television was television, movies were movies and of course, movies looked way better when you went to the theater.
Here’s where it gets both interesting and maddening. In the mid-1980s, the advent of cheaper and cheaper computing technology allowed video post-production to grow more and more sophisticated. Now, a new post-production methodology, once existing only for shows originating on videotape, like soap operas and talk shows, could now be applied to shows shot originally on film. A program could be shot on 35mm film, but instead of editing on film and then cutting negative, the original 35mm material footage would instead be scanned to videotape — at NTSC resolution, and the rest of the post-production process, editing, mixing, etc., would then be completed on tape, at a reduced cost. However, NO FILM NEGATIVE WAS CUT, so the final product would only exist on videotape, at NTSC’s greatly reduced video resolution and color. True blacks, stable reds and rich blues simply didn’t exist on videotape. Those shows originally shot on 35mm, with a 20-megapixel resolution, were never to be seen again if finished on tape.
![star trek voyager remastered hd Star Trek: The Original Series, Season 2, Episode 4 "Mirror, Mirror"](https://www.treknews.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/star-trek-tos-2x04-mirror-mirror.jpg)
Star Trek: The Original Series, Season 2, Episode 4 “Mirror, Mirror”
For certain programs, such as science fiction television, the upside of this new post-process allowed certain VFX elements to be produced far, far cheaper for television than ever before. For instance, a phaser blast or energy field, once hand-animated and shot on film, could now be generated and animated by some kind of video toaster technology at far less cost, in a much shorter time. Once, a producer might only be able to afford two phaser beams, but now they might now get themselves seven or eight blasts, allowing a much more exciting firefight. For the discerning viewer, however, this combination of film and video imagery, especially in genre programming, didn’t look very convincing, barely a step up from Land of the Lost .
The mid-80s Twilight Zone revival, as much as I adore it, is a perfect example of the incongruity of 35mm live-action photography and NTSC video generated special FX. But again, most viewers couldn’t tell the difference.
In late 1986 and early 1987, during the development of Star Trek: The Next Generation , it was decided early on the only way to produce the series on time and on budget, with all of the VFX demands Trek required, would be to shoot on 35mm film, then finish on videotape. Even the motion control model photography, with all of the individual, passes required, would be shot on 35mm and then, in an unprecedented move, actually composited on videotape using multiple, daisy-chained VTRs to minimize the reduction of resolution even further.
![star trek voyager remastered hd Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 4, Episode 26 "Redemption"](https://www.treknews.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/star-trek-tng-4x26-redemption.jpg)
Star Trek: The Next Generation, Season 4, Episode 26 “Redemption”
Unfortunately, this meant, unlike TOS and The Animated Series , there would be no 35mm finished negative of TNG … and the series would only ever exist on videotape at NTSC resolution. The same would hold true of DS9 and Voyager . Enterprise though, shot in 2001, would be future-proofed, shot on 35MM, and finished in HD, with the VFX created in CG at 720p, until the fourth season, which abandoned film altogether.
![star trek voyager remastered hd Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 6, Episode 11 "Waltz"](https://www.treknews.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/star-trek-ds9-6x11-waltz.jpg)
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 6, Episode 11 “Waltz”
Starting in 2004, after the beginning of regular HD broadcasts, it quickly became apparent to anyone paying attention, standard resolution, NTSC video would soon be rendered obsolete. After seeing an HD image, who would ever want to watch standard definition video again? Studios quickly began transferring their films and television to High Definition formats, settling, until very recently, on 1080p as the industry standard, bringing up pixel dimensions to 1920×1080, roughly five times the definition of standard definition video.
For TOS and The Animated Series , the transfer into High Definition was no problem. Each episode of TOS and The Animated Series already exists as a single cut negative, so he transfer process the same as any other film or television episode with cut negative.
![star trek voyager remastered hd Star Trek: Voyager, Season 4, Episode 1 "Scorpion, Part 2"](https://www.treknews.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/star-trek-voy-4x01-scorpion.jpg)
Star Trek: Voyager, Season 4, Episode 1 “Scorpion, Part 2”
Then why does the remaster of TOS have new VFX? A few reasons, actually. Originally, optical compositing was used to create spaceship shots, with many pieces of film combined and reshot on an optical printer. This process was used since the beginning of motion pictures, but each separate film element used multiple stocks and dirt tended to build up during the mechanical process of optical printing. Butted up next to the beautiful, live-action TOS footage, the original VFX, with its added dirt and diminished resolution, looked incongruous. So, CBS decided to create NEW visual effects that would smoothly transition with the stunningly colorful, live-action photography. The new VFX created a seamless experience and, as an added benefit, updated what some see as the most dated element of the original show. Thankfully, in a wise move, CBS included both versions on their blu release.
![star trek voyager remastered hd Star Trek: Enterprise, Season 4, Episode 1 "Storm Front"](https://www.treknews.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/star-trek-ent-4x01-storm-front.jpg)
Star Trek: Enterprise, Season 4, Episode 1 “Storm Front”
But TNG, DS9, and Voyager could not be rescanned and released in Full HD, as the original edited programs only existed on tape at NTSC resolution . With worldwide markets rapidly converting to HD, modern Trek, with the exception of Enterprise , would simply no longer be shown anywhere. With TNG still the most successful Trek series by a wide margin, Paramount and CBS desperately wanted to figure out a way to not let their crown jewel get thrown onto the scrapheap of history. Something had to be done.
So a radical notion was proposed…why not go back to the original negative and REBUILD the entire show, from from the ground up, in High Definition? In the history of television, this had never been done before. Essentially, all 178 episodes of TNG (176 if you’re watching the original versions of “Encounter at Farpoint” and “All Good Things”) would have to go through the entire post-production process AGAIN. The original edits would be adhered to exactly, but all the original negative would have to be rescanned, the VFX re-composed, the footage re-color-timed, certain VFX, such as phaser blasts and energy fields, recreated in CG, and the entire soundtrack, originally only finished in 2 channel stereo, would be remastered into thunderous, 7.1 DTS.
A Herculean task, to be sure, requiring many people working full time for years, to the tune of somewhere north of twelve million dollars. The enormous sweat-equity involved required the stamina of a long-distance runner. First, ALL the original negative would have to be tracked down, which was stored in thousands of boxes, then matched to every scene and take from the original finished episodes. Then, all of that negative needed to be scanned at 2K and color-timed from scratch, as the entire color palette of the series would change. For the first time, the REAL colors could be seen. For the model photography, also completed in 35mm, and added headache was discovered; celluloid sometimes shrinks over 25 years, so many VFX passes, requiring pin-registered accuracy with sometimes over ten elements to composite wouldn’t match up, so they had to be first scanned then recomposited in the computer. While that was the plan all along, sometimes certain elements were either lost or just too damaged to use, so an entire shot would have to be recreated in CG. Then, any phasers or other effects created utilizing the original technology of the era would have to then be recreated using modern CG. This created an interesting artistic dilemma for the restoration team…re-design something to update the look, or, whenever possible, use CG to recreate something to appear as close to the original intent, by the original production team, as possible. They chose the latter (the Crystalline Entity from the first season’s “Datalore” is a great example of this).
![star trek voyager remastered hd The Crystalline Entity from TNG-Remastered "Datalore"](https://www.treknews.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/tng-crystalline-entity.jpg)
The Crystalline Entity from TNG-Remastered “Datalore”
Long discussions were had about whether or not to finally go back and fix things, such as the scale issue of the various classes of Klingon Birds of Prey, but it was decided not to make such changes, and allow the show to exist as it always had. This was a philosophically different approach to the TOS restoration, which did update and modernize certain elements, to clarify or expand the storytelling. So with TNG, the long debate about whether or not the Enterprise D could actually fit inside the space dock from “11001001” will continue to rage in backgrounder circles.
From 2012 through 2014, the seven seasons of TNG, along with 5 single discs (two-part episodes cut into feature presentations) were released on Blu-Ray, with over 50 hours of newly-produced special features. The restoration remains an absolutely astonishing achievement in the annals of television and anyone watching the new versions of the episodes, can only marvel at the vast difference from the originals. Everyone involved at CBS Digital and the various other Post Houses who participated in the project deserves a hearty round of applause from fans the world over. At least the fans who appreciate and understand just how much work was done.
Unfortunately, during this same time, the popularity of streaming services skyrocketed, and the popularity of physical media began to diminish. Sales of physical discs dropped 10% a year across the board, the younger generation thought putting discs in machines was too 20th Century and even the loyal Trek fan base asked themselves, “why do I have to buy TNG YET AGAIN?” I bought the VHS tapes, the Laserdiscs and the DVDs, so do I really need the Blu-rays…? I don’t even have a Blu-ray player. Won’t it all be on Netflix anyway?” The absolutely justified high price-point of the initial Blu-ray seasons also didn’t help sales.
Ultimately, the final result of all the effort put into the restoration itself and the newly-created special features were ultimately disappointing. The disc sales didn’t match projections and continued to suffer as more and more people turned to streaming, where Star Trek was already widely available. Sure, the newly-remastered episodes of TNG have quietly replaced the original versions, but nowadays, very few people even notice, as they expect HD to look great.
Both Deep Space Nine and Voyager would require at least the same amount of time, manpower and money, but neither show was ever as popular as TNG or TOS. So, how can CBS be expected to shell out probably 20-million dollars per series to remaster them into HD?
TrekNews.net: Would remastering DS9 and Voyager be more difficult than the TOS and TNG projects were? If so, could you explain?
Robert Meyer Burnett : They absolutely would. Unlike TNG, which shot both all of their live-action and all of their model photography on 35mm film, which made scanning the original elements possible, both DS9 and Voyager made extensive use of CGI for their visual effects, especially in the later seasons. Those visual effects were rendered in standard NTSC resolution, with a maximum of 525 scan lines of resolution per second, split between two interlaced video fields of 262.5 scan lines running at 60 fields per second. So, the original resolution remains far, far below what audiences used to today’s HD, and now UHD resolutions, are accustomed to. These VFX could be upscaled 5x, but they’d have no detail. The Starship Defiant would look like a fuzzy, grey blob.
If the VFX assets originally created for the shows could be acquired, which is a HUGE if, they could be reworked and re-rerendered in 2K resolution for Blu-ray, but even then, VFX artists would have to go in and add all kinds of upgrades to the original shots to make the ships, planets, weapons fire and explosions. They look like they fit in with the gorgeous live-action photography. This would entail a number of artists working many, many long hours at considerable expense.
During the latter seasons of the TNG restoration, Mojo, one of the original, Emmy-Winning VFX artists on Voyager , who, at the time, was still in possession of many of the original DS9 and Voyager VFX assets, did a re-rendering VFX test on footage from “The Sacrifice of Angels.” The test really looked spectacular and proved it could be done. But again, it would still take very talented VFX artists working long hours to accomplish the number of shots required for the episodes at great cost.
However, since then, I’ve heard many of these assets have been lost, either through drive failure or simply the dumping of all the original data.
The only alternative would be to re-create all of the CG VFX shots from scratch, much the same way CBS Digital re-created TOS’ visual effects. But with the number of elements needed during DS9’s Dominion War arc, with sometimes hundreds of starships in combat, this could cost in the millions, if not tens of millions of dollars, depending on who was doing the VFX.
TrekNews.net: Do you think CBS All Access could be the impetus for CBS to remaster those shows?
Robert Meyer Burnett : Hard to say, but probably no. Like Amazon and Netflix have already discovered, the success of All Access depends on whether or not there’s enough exclusive content to convince viewers to sign up. Star Trek: Discovery is a good start, but it remains to be seen if it can not only recapture the fanbase but also be destination viewing for an entirely new audience. But until All Access has Netflix money to burn, there’s not going to be a DS9 or Voyager restoration anytime soon. Again, you’re looking at eight years and perhaps 40 million dollars of work.
TrekNews.net: Are you aware of any newly recorded bonus material that will appear on the new DS9 and Voyager DVD sets?
Robert Meyer Burnett : With the meteoric rise of streaming services like Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon, and the inevitable steady decline of physical media, the studios are spending very little money on special features these days. Warner Home Video even returned to static disc menus, not seen since the early days of the DVD format, to keep budgets down. For special features auteurist such as myself, it’s very disheartening. Fortunately, boutique companies like SHOUT Factory, Arrow and Criterion are keeping the art alive, but at substantially reduced budgets. Flying up to Calgary to do a live, multi-camera shoot with the entire cast of TNG, as we did, is certainly a thing of the past. Thankfully, you can see me host this amazing reunion on the TNG – Season Two Blu-ray set.
For the TNG Remastering project, both Roger Lay Jr. and I, and Star Trek fans everywhere, were extremely lucky to have Ken Ross, the Executive Vice President and General Manager of CBS Home Entertainment, overseeing the entire restoration, including all of our special features. A huge proponent of the TNG project from the very beginning, he not only convinced CBS such a restoration was possible but essential. Ken shook loose the millions of dollars needed to restore all 178 episodes of TNG. He was also personally responsible for securing the involvement of all of the principal cast for our special features. Ken is a legend in the home video business, beginning his career just out of college in the early 80s, working for Andre Blay’s Magnetic Video, one of the very first home video companies ever, eventually acquired by 20th Century Fox and becoming CBS/FOX Home Entertainment.
Also, because Roger and I were such fanatical Trek fans, we delivered far, far more special features than we ever contracted to produce. We just thought up cool pieces and produced them, such as the writer’s roundtable on the TNG Season Three set. For instance, because we knew he was such a fanatical TNG fan, we thought Seth MacFarlane would be perfect to host the roundtable. We asked Brannon Braga, at the time working with Seth on Cosmos , if he might host and to put in a good word for us. Brannon said “sure,” so one day, Roger just called up Seth and asked him to host the roundtable, and he agreed. We certainly couldn’t pay him for his services, but because he loved Trek, not only showed up but arrived with pages and pages of hand-written research notes and delivered a rollicking conversation with the TNG writing staff which has since been ripped off for other shows many times since. For our Enterprise cast reunion, we basically shot the entire 90-minute piece for free, the actors agreeing to participate simply because Brannon Braga was involved and they’d loved the show. As an aside, I think Bacula agreed because he wanted to give Brannon shit for the series finale of Enterprise .
Unfortunately, the TNG Blu-rays, after a promising start, simply didn’t sell as well as expected, and the expense of producing such an amazing restoration wasn’t as immediately profitable as first hoped. Neither the unprecedented restoration, nor our extensive special features, enticed enough of the fanbase to double, or even, in some cases, triple-dip — which is a shame, because I can honestly say the TNG Blu-rays, along with The Twilight Zone Blu-rays, remain the two greatest television releases of the home video era.
After the wonderful recent Original Series feature releases and the Roddenberry Vault , with special features also produced by Roger Lay Jr. and the Okudas, I expect we won’t see such special features on future Trek releases, with perhaps Star Trek: Discovery being an exception. I know there was a shortlist of very capable special feature producers for the production, and any one of them could produce some amazing material.
However, Executive Producer Ira Steven-Behr is producing his own Deep Space Nine documentary with the same team who produced Adam Nimoy’s For the Love of Spock , which I’m very much looking forward to.
Finally, I’d like to encourage everyone who hasn’t already done so to pick up the TNG Complete Series Box set. Along with the series itself, there are some amazing special features on the disc that will absolutely delight longtime fans. I spent three years of my life on the project and I’m just as proud of my work on the special features as anything else I’ve done in my career.
As always, Live Long and Prosper… or, Love Long and Party… whichever you prefer!
I’d like to thank Robert Meyer Burnett for the in-depth and thoughtful answers. I sincerely hope this information will help clear up any confusion surrounding the remastering projects.
You can follow Rob on Twitter @BurnettRM .
As always, stay tuned to TrekNews.net for the latest Star Trek news. Follow @TrekNewsnet on Twitter, TrekNews on Facebook, TrekNews on Instagram and TrekNewsnet on YouTube.
![star trek voyager remastered hd](https://treknews.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/brian-wilkins-150x150.jpg)
Founded TrekNews.net in 2011. UX, visual designer, and published photographer based in the Boston area. Connoisseur of Star Trek, sci-fi, '80s horror, synthwave sounds, and tacos. You can follow Brian on Twitter @brianwilkins .
![star trek voyager remastered hd star trek voyager remastered hd](https://treknews.net/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/treknews_logo_line_2020_240.png)
390 Comments
February 2, 2017 at 2:00 pm
This was very enlightening, and he did a great job explaining something that could have been very difficult to understand. Thank you!
Brian Wilkins
February 3, 2017 at 10:33 am
Thanks! Glad you enjoyed it. It’s a lot of info but I think it’s important to get it out there.
NotBuyingIt
February 2, 2017 at 2:21 pm
Great article, but why not crowd fund a restoration and let the fans that want it support it? If cost is the factor, with crowd funding, if it makes enough to get done, it gets done, otherwise it doesn’t. It seems like a no brainer to me. They could have special box sets for backers, etc. Sell some film cells as part of a bundle, etc. I bet some super fans would really get behind this.
February 2, 2017 at 2:50 pm
I was thinking the same thing about crowd funding, but then you have a lot of CBS haters who don’t even want to pay a few dollars to watch Discovery unfortunately…
February 2, 2017 at 2:56 pm
RMB knows a chap who has some experience with crowd funding.
Dusty Ayres
February 5, 2017 at 8:37 am
Crowdfunding isn’t going to work for this; you all should have bought the Next Generation Blu-Ray’s, and that’s it. Money talks, and CBS/Paramount aren’t charities (especially not charities for fans.)
February 5, 2017 at 9:51 pm
You seem unclear as to how crowdfunding works. If CBS set the mark for producing a series remaster at $20M and 200,000 fans ponied up $100 each with a disc set as their swag (think of it as a really early pre-order), then where’s the charity?
If the fans don’t chip in, CBS is out nothing – they can say there’s not enough demand and wash their hands. If they get their costs covered, then they make the remasters, ship the donors their copies and have retail units to sell and they can syndicate the new shinies. Everyone wins.
February 21, 2017 at 11:02 pm
CBS is a big corporation with loads of inefficiencies and unions and what not. A remaster by fans of the show working through collaboration across the world would be cheaper and would be way more affordable. Instead of letting the films ROT in their boxes the decent thing would be for CBS to retain ownership while letting fans pay for any remastering.
February 26, 2017 at 2:55 am
It’s not going to be done no matter what you and others here say, and I hope that it won’t be.
Michael Kurland
March 4, 2017 at 11:07 am
You’d better be wrong about that, bub!
March 5, 2017 at 2:44 pm
I’m NOT wrong, and it’s not going to happen, period.
Marvin Miller
August 16, 2017 at 9:55 pm
Because Dusty said so, it must be true.
David Hinkle
January 4, 2018 at 11:38 pm
It’s never going to happen because the TNG Blu rays didn’t sell well enough to justify the cost to remaster deep space nine
Beetlescott
January 9, 2018 at 1:46 pm
I think it will be done, but much later than now, when costs for it go way down.
July 6, 2020 at 4:58 pm
I’m predicting we will see a Blu-ray release in the 23rd century.
January 9, 2018 at 1:45 pm
That is EXACTLY what I was thinking.
August 18, 2017 at 10:38 pm
You tell ’em Dusty, after all, you are the way the truth and the light.
john morris
July 14, 2017 at 1:26 am
It’s $20 million now. Ten years from now costs will drop.
July 14, 2017 at 2:21 am
Not enough for a big company like CBS to be committing money for it to be put on Blu-Ray or 4K. Time to stop being a deluded fool.
Yes, listen to Dusty – he knows things.
January 9, 2018 at 1:47 pm
agreed. Voyager has always been my favorite, I can wait, it WILL happen.
March 4, 2017 at 8:30 pm
If the remastering work isn’t done by union members, and everyone qualified to do it *that would be granted access to the data* is a union member, then CBS is not going to be involved, because modern contracts cover this kind of stuff. We think Trek is magical and special, and it is, but that doesn’t change the reality of Hollywood.
polymetisOdysseus
August 22, 2019 at 8:31 pm
This isn’t REALLY about Star Trek, is it, Tossaway?
Real Anti-Racist Action
July 1, 2017 at 8:49 pm
I did, I went to Wal-Mart that night on release night, I thought it was going to be big! Walmart had it in the system, but none in store haha. It took them almost two weeks to put them on the shelves, I had to go three days later to a Hastings when they finally had it on the shelve. I bought all of the seasons as soon as they come out, plus the special double episodes turned into mini-movies. I have been thinking about buying doubles of all of them now just to keep in my safe for future generations and to help give more money to CBS for future Star Trek release! Plus I own all of the movies on Blu-ray. CBS should release TNG now on the 2K transfer they already made. Lets us half it in 2K, they already mastered it in 2K.
But you are right, more ‘Trekkies’ should have assisted us REAL Trekkers in buying them early when they were all released so it would look to CBS and be a REAL SUCCESS!
July 2, 2017 at 12:29 am
Good to see a sensible person doing what should have been done by most of the whiners on this site commenting on this article. I salute you for what you’ve done.
Shelly Winfrey
July 17, 2017 at 7:56 pm
I salute you with the middle finger, you Tribbling Troll!
August 16, 2017 at 9:54 pm
Yes, you decide who is sensible Dusty. Mighty big of you!
Eric Adam Hovis
Wow this Dusty guy is so toxic. I’m not sure why he needed to be so forceful about his crystal ball predictions. “IT”LL NEVER HAPPEN!!!” I don’t understand why someone would get so annoyed by others getting excited, looking for solutions, or having hope.
I’m hoping costs go down, or a crowdfunding thing happens. I want a blu ray voyager series.
Green Sanic
Dusty, just because you don’t feel embarrassed by your constant overuse of unnecessary italics and saying the non-word “frak” doesn’t mean you aren’t embarrassing yourself. The latter is incredibly telling, by the way. As is your anime avatar featuring a fedora. I mean damn, just look at yourself.
I dgaf that this is a year old. I doubt you’ve improved much since then.
Zachariah Dearing
What about people like me, who didn’t have a job and/or the spare money to buy stuff like that at the time? I mean, I was still a teenager when the Blu-Rays were coming out, and I still don’t even own a Blu-Ray player. Now, I do have some income, and I’d be interested in helping to crowdfund something like this.
February 2, 2017 at 6:58 pm
I think CBS started that hate. I don’t mind paying for something, it just insults me that the only reason I am having to pay for it is because I live in the U.S..
February 5, 2017 at 8:40 am
I’m sorry, but that’s bullcrap. Nobody’s ‘insulting’ you because now you might have to pay for a streaming service just to watch a new Star Trek show.
February 5, 2017 at 1:28 pm
I clearly stated that I don’t mind paying for it. Why not address what I actually said if you are going to respond?
Ghost Robot Venture
February 5, 2017 at 8:25 pm
Everyone outside the US and Canada is paying for it as well via Netflix.
February 6, 2017 at 10:03 am
No, no they are not. Everywhere else gets it on regular CBS broadcast. It is available on Netflix as well, outside of the US, but it is still on broadcast television. In the US, it’s CBS All Access or nothing. Not even on Netflix, which I also already pay for. In short, I pay for CBS through my cable company as well as paying for Netflix. Either of those would get me the show were I in Europe, neither will get me the show because I am in the US.
February 6, 2017 at 5:15 pm
Uh, it’s exclusive to Netflix in 188 territories outside the US and Canada. I don’t know where you’re getting “regular CBS broadcast” from. I pay for Netflix in Australia, so yeah, I’m paying for it too.
February 9, 2017 at 8:50 pm
That seems to have changed with the Netflix contract so I stand corrected. Doesn’t change how I feel however. How would you, as an Aussie Netflix user, feel if you had to sign up for yet another service to see it?
February 9, 2017 at 11:26 pm
I’m also signed up to Stan (a local streaming service) and Amazon Prime (which only just launched here), so I’m honestly wouldn’t be that fussed. They have to make their investment back on it, or it gets cancelled. TNG, DS9 and VOY all debuted on VHS in Australia ahead of their late-night, often delayed TV airings, so it’s not like I’ve ever gotten Trek “for free.”
Adam Bentley
February 9, 2017 at 12:52 am
You’re wrong. It’s not on regular broadcast at all. It’s only on Netflix outside of US/Canada. You’re part of the problem with false misleading info being spread.
February 9, 2017 at 8:48 pm
I stand corrected, it looks as if the broadcast in Europe went away with the Netflix deal. It really doesn’t change my opinion, however, as it doesn’t change the point. I will pay more because I am a US Netflix member. I guess you are a member of the “take advantage of who you can” club. A very Star Trek point of view (yes, that was sarcasm).
February 22, 2017 at 7:28 pm
No, I’m part of the “Be grateful and happy ST is coming back club” and the “Who gives a fuck if we have to pay a few dollars a month club”.
February 23, 2017 at 9:01 am
When one does not give a fuck a fucking is what one shall get. My country is a shining example of it.
August 16, 2017 at 9:24 pm
Connor Murray
February 7, 2017 at 9:04 am
We don’t even get CBS in the UK so that’s not true.
July 14, 2017 at 1:44 am
Shows are purchased all the time by foreign networks. Just because CBS makes some announcement about only on “our special CBS web -thingy-service” is by no means permanent or is it etched in stone. It might be a year or two years later but assuming the show gets good ratings, why wouldn’t CBS sell it. Remember, money talks and bullshit walks.
LeopoldoGaltieri
September 10, 2017 at 6:44 am
You’ll be getting it eventually (we Canadians are getting CBSAA this year so most likely, you Brits will be getting it too.)
July 14, 2017 at 1:35 am
Your information is out of date. I guess Americans really don’t know what is going on outside of their borders. CBS just made a big deal with Bell Media. Bell Media owns the Space Channel. There was a big announcement months ago – Us Canadians (in Southern Ontario at least) will be watching Star Trek Discovery on the Space Channel…For free. While those of us who have the Space Channel in our cable/satellite packages will see it for free. In other words I won’t have to pay any extra. Anyway, I still don’t see what the fuss is all about. You just buy the show as new seasons come out on Blu-Ray or DVD.
July 20, 2017 at 11:22 pm
I’m Australian, but yeah I take your point.
February 14, 2017 at 6:55 pm
I probably won’t be paying CBS for Discovery, but I would sure as hell pay them for DS9.
July 14, 2017 at 1:55 am
Why, what is wrong with DS9? I agree the pilot was bad and confusing. I know a lot of people who wanted to watch DS9; but couldn’t follow the show because of the stupid pilot. And the first season was crappy too. Or are you one of those fans that won’t watch Star Trek unless there is a ship called Enterprise on it? No offense sir but the Star trek universe is more than that. If you don’t like it, then you don’t like. Just curious, what is it about DS9 that you don’t like? If I may ask?
August 16, 2017 at 9:42 pm
You obviously didn’t read what you replied to properly. He never said he disliked DS9, quite the opposite. He said he would gladly pay for DS9.
But he’s not going to get it, no matter how much he whines his butthurt fanboy ass off about it. It’s high time for him, Eric and others here to face facts; the franchise has moved on from TNG/DS9/Voyager to Discovery and streaming, and there’s no looking back.
July 1, 2017 at 8:44 pm
I would pay $500 dollars to help fund DS9 to be restored into 4K and I would pay $600 to help Voyager be restored as well! However, I would pay $200 to stop Discovery from being launched as a platform to hijack and erode what real Star Trek has built up. Gene Roddenberry warned all of is in his interview titled “Inside Star Trek with Gene Roddenberry” that forces would attempts to use Star Trek in the future to steer people for political and social gain to control people. Real Star Trek is not Liberal or Conservative, it is more center and Libertarian with Kirk and Picard and Janeway always giving the speech about (personal freedoms over the state).
I promise you three things bout this new series #1 It will not be science based, but will instead be replaced with emotionalism based on emotional-wishing. #2 Will not have the morality argument centered on personal freedoms. #3 Will have political motivations behind all of the dialog and visual imaging. Another-words, a perfect CIA tool to help social engineer the masses. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2VpgoyhUrMc
July 9, 2017 at 6:11 pm
fuck off you brain-dead moron, go back to sucking Trump’s dick.
Dan Heffernan
July 9, 2017 at 6:54 pm
Triggered beta cuckboi is triggered.
July 9, 2017 at 11:26 pm
anyone who uses “cuckboi” and “triggered” as insults is a brain-dead piece of shit who cannot be taken seriously, go back to Infowars and suck off Alex Jones you worthless fucking cocksucker, go play in traffic.
July 10, 2017 at 1:40 am
Face it cuckboi you’re a triggered pansy who is a true cuckold little bitch. Sorry that you are offended I call women as I see them. Go suck your mommies teat this is the real world and you’re failing at it.
February 4, 2021 at 2:35 pm
Exactly that, Credo. Yet, they simply expect this company to lose millions making Blu-Ray and 4K box sets of two shows in this franchise that are, through no fault of their own, not as popular as the other older ones or as popular as the new ones.
February 2, 2017 at 3:57 pm
Yep I’d pay 90’s VHS prices for an Episode.
February 5, 2017 at 8:41 am
Except you’re NOT living in the ’90’s now, and you have to pay 2010’s prices for 2010’s media.
February 5, 2017 at 10:48 am
Wow thanks for the reality check, I’d never herd of inflation till now. That doesn’t change my statement.
February 5, 2017 at 1:31 pm
I actually think VHS tapes in the 90’s were more expensive than a lot of DVD/BR stuff now. Particularly in the early 90’s.
David Robbins
December 29, 2017 at 4:58 pm
They were here in the UK. CIC Video released the videos here two episodes per tape. TOS were £9.99 per tape, later £10.99. TNG started at £10.21 and by tape 89 were about £12.99. DS9 and Voyager were £14.99 or £15.99 per tape by the time I stopped buying them about 1997/1998. Must have spent a good £2000 over 7 years or so. TNG on VHS must have cost me at least £1000 to buy. Makes 7 TNG DVD box sets a bargain by comparison when they were released in 2003.
February 5, 2017 at 3:12 pm
Did you ever hear of ‘this is not possible’ as mentioned in the article? Or did that pass right above your head?
February 6, 2017 at 3:56 am
Obviously you’ve forgotten Star Trek’s history. You can thank us unrealistic fans for everything beyond TOS season 2. YOUR WELCOME!!!
February 6, 2017 at 5:05 pm
Said letter writing campaigns were organized by Gene Roddenberry and not (really) by the fans.
February 21, 2017 at 7:42 pm
So one guy suggested it and thousands of fans did it. What’s the ratio there are you any good at math?
February 26, 2017 at 3:06 am
Gene orchestrated all of the letter writing campaigns in a (some would say) cynical move to get Star Trek back on the air for one more season. All of these were set up and paid for by him out of his own pocket. To say that the fans did it all by themselves is wrong and incorrect historically (check out the book Gene Roddenberry: The Man And The Myth Behind Star Trek for more.)
As for the crowdfunding idea to have fans do this, it’s been explained by others here why this won’t work, but like little children, the rest of you all won’t listen, because of a stupid belief in the power of Star Trek fandom to accomplish anything (also something that’s part of other sci-fi media fandoms like this one. )
April 29, 2017 at 8:43 pm
But isn’t that one of the pillars of Trek? Do do this impossible and never stop trying?
I get that you are trying to be practical and the voice of reason here, but if someone wants to start a kickstarter for DS9 or Voyager, I’m in. So tired of the lower resolution, aliasing artifacts and poor quality of Voyager Eps (for example) that I find myself watching on BBCA. Both of these shows had their faults also had some incredibly good story-telling and “what if” scenarios in the ST Universe. I think for the larger “sake of Trek” these series should be preserved as best as possible. We also know now, why the TNG BluRay set wasn’t an initial financial success. It was bad timing as distribution model was in the midst of change.
Going fwd we have had some time make streaming viable. Heck, if CBS needs evidence of the love for DS9 and Voyager, I’ll buy a series Blu-ray copy of TNG today. I think there is distrust toward CBS / Paramount based on how they treated / put rules in place for Fan Fiction last year. They don’t completely understand their fanbase. Hopefully that can change with more vocal fans and campaigns to save / re-release old series.
July 14, 2017 at 2:00 am
The faulty Nelson rating system was to blame. It showed Star Trek low in the ratings, when in fact it was doing very well. This is a known fact.
July 14, 2017 at 2:20 am
No, it wasn’t doing well, and was losing money for NBC (losing it so much that it was hurting any program that was shone on the same night as it-which is why it was moved to the Friday night ‘death slot’.
July 16, 2017 at 6:40 pm
Yes it was, too!
February 20, 2017 at 3:06 am
No one cares about you old folks and your holier than thou “we saved Star Trek so we’re owed everything” attitude
February 21, 2017 at 8:02 pm
Did you miss the point above, we are offering to fund it for them. That’s the opposite of being “owed everything”. That rules out any finance excuses. If people are willing to pay half a million for a DS9 doco then they will easily pay a few million for season 1 crowd funding. The only excuse left is if they are too embarrassed to use that style of funding. Also don’t assume my age, I didn’t purchase anything until I herd TNG was coming to bluray.
Did you not get it; CBS isn’t going to take crowd-sourced money from anybody to remaster either DS9 or Voyager . It seems that you don’t get what I said about using reason to guide what you say.
February 26, 2017 at 3:12 am
You tell them. Theses idiots don’t get it at all.
March 4, 2017 at 6:41 am
You don’t get it, DS9 HD clips and re-rendered CGI are inbound via crowd funding. You will eat your words in the years to come.
March 5, 2017 at 2:45 pm
Eat my words? No executive is going to risk their neck in letting fans do this, ever. And they should’t do so.
March 6, 2017 at 12:16 am
I hate to repeat myself but they are already doing CROWD FUNDED HD clips. It doesn’t matter what you think. It matter’s what happens. You’ve been wrong already, why would anyone believe you now.
January 4, 2018 at 11:47 pm
There is no crowd funding your obviously lying or your reading false information
August 16, 2017 at 9:52 pm
Dusty knows things.
May 23, 2017 at 11:16 pm
Ssshhh he’s a liberal don’t waste your time with valid points.
July 9, 2017 at 6:14 pm
go back to Breitbart dumb motherfucker
Go back to your parents basement and cry more liberal tears you triggered pussy.
July 9, 2017 at 11:22 pm
Go suck Trump’s you worthless cocksucking piece of fucking dogshit, you’re the only who’s “triggered” here you shitstain pussy.
You have to be the dumbest motherfucker on the planet.
July 10, 2017 at 1:38 am
Yoy are the only crybaby pussy, as for assuming that I like Trump, you’re not only a crybaby bitch but a moron. You are the reason why the movie Idiocracy is now a documentary. Stick that in your dildo and smoke it crybaby Fuckboi.
What the frak does my political bent have to do with this?
Dusty, Jerry says you are special.
July 16, 2017 at 5:06 pm
I’d build the models of the ships in the early 70’s and shoot at them with my BB gun, that saucer section was hard to f-up bro.
November 20, 2017 at 11:57 am
You are = you’re, not your.
All that was started (and paid for) by Gene Roddenberry back in the late ’60’s (at one big supposedly ‘fan’-driven and ‘fan’ organized protest outside NBC in Los Angeles, guess who was watching the proceedings a few feet away on a motorbike, completely clad in black from head to toe? Roddenberry , who paid for it-and following protests-out of his pockets.)
Please stop regurgitating the bullcrap myths that Roddenberry (and others) spouted at conventions in the 1970’s and ’80’s.
SteveRanden
*You’re
Dusty, you’re my hero.
August 17, 2017 at 8:15 am
Lol yeah you can tell Dusty and Diamond are SJW’s. The self self righteousness is palpable.
August 17, 2017 at 3:22 pm
How much you want to bet he voted for Hillary and is a card-carrying Liberal? Those are usually the ones that cannot resist telling everyone what to do and how to think.
I’m not an SJW, dufus; I’m a longtime fan of this franchise (since the early 70’s) who understands the realities of home video nowadays and why certain things make a profit and others don’t. Do you?
Why not try using reason for a change and learning about financial matters related to companies so that instead of acting like a spoiled brat who expects to have candy every day, you under stand that some things cannot be as far as home video (demand and supply) is concerned?
December 29, 2017 at 4:43 pm
I paid an absolute fortune for Star Trek TOS/TNG/DS9/VOY on VHS way back in the 1990s. Two episodes were £10 each, later as much as £15 each when I stopped buying them. Towards the end of TNG run they were releasing 3 tapes at a time about each month or two. Must have spent at least £2000 on Star Trek releases back then in the 90s. Todays kids don’t know how good they have it with box sets on DVD/BD costing a fraction of what the VHS’s cost on release.
And that figure doesn’t include the cost of what I spent on importing Star Trek laserdiscs from the states in the late 90s/early 2000s. I paid well over £100 on one STTNG laserdisc just to complete the set. And on top of that the customs charges. I once imported the first TNG season on LD and had to pay £65 in import, VAT and admin fees.
Tom Cruise Never Phones It IN
Exactly, I would rent TOS episodes on VHS for $4 each and then I bought a few of the first DVD’s that had two episodes on each disc for $15 and I recently bought TOS complete series on blu ray for $24.
February 3, 2017 at 1:27 am
I have never seen a crowdfunded product that made $20 million, it seems unlikely.
February 3, 2017 at 4:14 am
Have you ever heard of “Star Citizen”, it’s a game and they rased $142,443,678 https://robertsspaceindustries.com/funding-goals
February 5, 2017 at 3:14 pm
Have you ever heard of ‘that’s not a realistic option?’
February 5, 2017 at 3:13 pm
It’s also stupid, just as stupid as the fundraising for a fifth season of Enterprise .
February 3, 2017 at 10:34 am
While it’s a great idea, I honestly don’t see CBS going the crowdfunding route anytime soon.
Morgan Smith
February 3, 2017 at 1:55 pm
If not crownfunding, maybe crowdsourcing the edits? I have, and others have, recommended making the scanned footage available to fans/teams of fans (via some webportal) to allow the fans to edit (including adding new HD CGI) episodes/scenes for CBS. Yeah, there would be the issue of getting the contractual bits ironed out (access to footage, use, etc.), but this way there wouldn’t be an issue with money.
Even if this was just restricted to having fans produce CGI sequences/elements, leaving the rest of the editing to CBS, that would take a lot of the costs off of CBS.
Please float these ideas to Mr. Burnett or your other contacts and see if they can get any traction.
And thanks for the great article!
February 4, 2017 at 11:42 am
Crowdsourcing — who’s going to do QC? How do you tell some “superfan” that he’s incompetent and should just stay away? Then there’s the minefield of copyright. No matter what waivers people sign, some will be pissed off about some editorial choice and make a huge stink and threaten to sue and claim their work has been stolen/is libellous, etc, etc. Whatever the merits it will soak up legal fees. Managing and coordinating all these amateurs would cost more than just hiring pros who do what they’re told on time and don’t talk back.
Anyway; I watched TV in the 60s on 20″ b/w screen. It was and always is the story and the actors that made it worth the time. More DPI doesn’t make a better show. It’s nice, and I like my 40″ HD screen, but if a show I’m interested in is only in a fuzzy 360p VHS rip, I’ll watch it rather than some modern idiocy in 1080p pure digital.
February 5, 2017 at 9:03 am
Pray tell, please expand further on what shows are a ‘modern idiocy in 1080p pure digital’ for me and others. I will agree with you on the first paragraph, though.
February 6, 2017 at 2:21 am
Easily 95% of shows would fall into that category. Of course it’s entirely subjective, but for instance, I’d put all “reality TV” in that category for a start. YMMV.
February 6, 2017 at 9:29 am
Reality TV, yes, but only reality TV. There’s nothing really wrong with most of the sitcoms, drama shows or sci-fi/fantasy shows.
July 9, 2017 at 6:15 pm
February 21, 2017 at 11:08 pm
Doesn’t matter if some superfan screws up – there will be others who make it better. There will be “versions” and obviously the fans will go for the ones that appeal to them. This is what happens in crowdsourced “fan subtitles” where there are a whole bunch of subtitles but fans prefer one “fan group’s” work based on reputation and/or output.
February 22, 2017 at 12:26 am
Really? CBS would allow every fan who felt inclined to release a “version”? CBS isn’t donating the videos to public domain, they want to sell them. They need a consistent quality, not whatever some self-designated superfan wanted to do, differently from every other episode.
February 23, 2017 at 12:30 pm
Yup – better to put that material out there in the public domain than hoard it and let that film rot in some warehouse so that nobody gets any benefit from it. If CBS wants to sell them – let them make copies of the original 35mm film and sell that to those who want it – just like they used to do it 50 years ago! If they want consistent quality then they will need to pony up the money – you can’t have your cake and eat it too – that too without making any effort .
February 5, 2017 at 8:56 am
A bunch of fans doing this would just be seen as being amateurish, most likely. It’s a CBS property, and CBS is going to do it in-house, when the company feels like doing so and when there’s a profit in it. As I said above, this is a business, not a charity for sci-fi fans (especially fans that couldn’t be bothered to buy the previous older TV show remastered on Blu-Ray.) This is CAPITALISM in action, folks.
August 16, 2017 at 9:57 pm
Everyone, you must listen to Dusty. He’s an economist and he knows things.
February 20, 2017 at 3:07 am
Fans to do what? Pretend to do quality work?
February 5, 2017 at 8:44 am
Me neither. The fans have to wake the frak up and accept reality about this matter.
Yes, you tell us what the reality is Dusty. We need you to tell us.
or else what? or else…nothing is different. gosh this Dusty guy has a stick up his butt. So much emotional energy put into being negative and toxic. I wish there was a way to block individual users on these otherwise delightful comments. It’s like he’s determined to make everyone as miserable as he is, taking bold stands about things that really don’t matter, just to suck the joy away from everyone else.
This guy repeatedly posts in this thread declaring what will and won’t happen in the future, like Q threatened to banish him to Chaotic Space unless he convinces everyone alive that a Voyager remaster can’t happen. Like, for real, it’s like he’s being held hostage somewhere being forced to convince everyone it can’t happen. That’s the only way I could explain how adamantly he demands everyone see the future as he does. Let people have hope/figure out solutions. Damn. I don’t see how it hurts you to let others dream or work on solutions.
February 4, 2021 at 3:08 pm
I’m the one with a stick up his butt? Me ? More like you are, buddy; you’re butthurt that I tried to explain further why crowdsource funding won’t work and won’t be accepted, and because I said what I said, you want to blast me with all sorts of insults, including the ‘librul’ one. Pathetic, but also sad (or pathetically sad? I never know.)
adamwhitehead
February 3, 2017 at 1:32 pm
It’s a good idea, and you could do it by season to break the cost down. Also, as video gamers and board gamers have found, a crowdfunding campaign itself can generate a lot of interest and excitement and raise the profile of the campaign.
My main problem is that I can’t see “DS9 Season 1 HD Restoration” raising more than $3-4 million at a stretch, which is likely to be only a third of what they need. You’d also have the problem that DS9’s first season is not going to get a huge number of people excited (although it’s certainly far better than TNG’s first season, and has a few classics like “Duet”, but that’s not exactly an episode crying out for a HD remaster).
You’ll also get a lot of blowback from people angrily saying that CBS should be paying for it itself. Massive, multi-million companies doing crowdfunding feels a bit insulting.
June 1, 2017 at 2:31 pm
Yep, this could be the real problem with crowd funding. CBS made over a billion dollars in net profit for 2015. It’s not that they can’t afford a 20 million dollar remaster, it’s that they just prefer to spend money on things they think will pay for themselves immediately. They always think short term profits and not long term investments.
On the other hand, maybe they want to wait for the ridiculous HD/4K/8K/UHD chaos to stabilize a bit. Then remaster everything in a stable format.
1st season would be the cheapest. season 5, 6 and 7 would be expensive. If you are going to do this right, all of the reuse footage in season 7 needs to be remove and replace with new cgi so each battle is unique., that not going to be cheap.
February 3, 2017 at 4:29 pm
Very much agreed. The costs are legitimately daunting, but I know I would almost certainly spend more eagerly for a crowd-funded project than I would at retail. Its just a psychological difference. I look at something like the MST3K revival where I pledged at a significant premium even as I wait for price drops on retail releases. It’d be asking a lot of fans, but fairly, I think. They’ve always done a good job explaining why this is such a difficult project and the results with TNG speak for themselves.
February 14, 2017 at 7:01 pm
The costs are NOTHING. 20 million? Please. That’s like 112000 per episode. Not even enough to do an episode of reality TV, probably. The Grand Tour, a car show, has something like 7 million or so per episode? And is financially viable. Many shows cost several millions to make. The figures for DS9 only look so high because there are so many episodes. Break it down. Start with season 3 perhaps. I’d pay $100 for a complete box. I’d pay 200. All you need is 200000 fans to spend $100. I think that isn’t unrealistic. And you aren’t even taking into account the money they’d make from syndication rights, Netflix, CBS All Access subscriptions etc., and selling the box at retail and on iTunes etc.
August 16, 2017 at 9:27 pm
Why don’t you and others like you spend the money to subscribe to CBS All Access and watch the new show instead? You’re not owed anything but what they put out, you know, and as for your hatred of the new movies and the new TV shows, you’re in the minority.
Oh, Dusty. Why does optimism and hope enrage you so? You are going to die young of stress if you don’t outgrow that.
What on Earth are you even talking about?
Because the new show was and is terrible.
January 5, 2020 at 4:27 am
It is completely terrible. I couldn’t even finish it because I didn’t care what happened, and I’m not the only one.
Probably because the new show sucks.
Lefty Throckmorton
February 4, 2021 at 2:29 pm
There is no way in hell or Hogwarts that CBS Studios would accept a crowd sourced restoration of either of those TV shows: they own them, and they know how the market is and the reason said shows won’t make as much money as deluded fans like yourself that won’t accept reality (and who also need to take businesses courses so that they can understand why CBS Studios has the reasons it does for not doing said desired remastering) can understand. CBS Studios is a business , not (as I observed somebody say) a charity for nerds.
February 2, 2017 at 3:54 pm
I have a stupid suggestion that might work, give access to the reels for scanning by Industry insider fans for free, who already have the qualifications to scan and preserve 35mm with care. And then let specially nominated fans donate time to edit and animate as needed. It might take years to get a season out but at least it would happen, have them sign NDA’s not to leak things online etc. Then get people like the Okuda’s to see if further fixes are needed. I know this would sound crazy to CBS execs but at least they get to sell something new to us eventually. Even start with some 2 part episodes and sell them as movies like with TNG blu’s. Anything would look better than the DVD’s. Think of it like a Kickstarter but for free professional labour. I’d donate a day a week to edit and do colour timing etc.
February 2, 2017 at 8:20 pm
I had these same thoughts. I’d really like to hear a studio/producer response to these ideas. If nothing else, doing some two-parters would probably be worth it, if they don’t want to let us help them ourselves.
February 2, 2017 at 9:35 pm
Yeah that is stupid, because it takes a lot to deliver a complex project that can’t be done on a volunteer basis. How would people survive if they worked for free.
This isn’t a fan movie that can be done on off hours. It needs people who can work 8-12 hour days, for a number of years. It requires asset management, project managers, dedicated hardware,etc
Maybe you can wait 20 years to get restored versions using the volunteer method.
Professionals don’t give out free labor for projects like this.
February 3, 2017 at 2:24 am
Maybe they would, if they were passionate enough about it, but even then it would take a very good while to get it finished, as you mentioned…
February 3, 2017 at 5:23 am
I think they would do it and your right it may actually take 20 years, but that’s still more than a dozen episodes a year rather than never. The guys that made the De-specialised versions of Star Wars did it for free (they put in more work than you’d first think). I got my DVD copy of Star Trek – The Motion Picture Special Longer edition edited together from mixed sources thanks to fan work. There are guys like NeonVisual who recreate 4K FX scenes from Voyager on youtube just for fun, and IRML even put out a few test scenes using official DS9 assets. There are other community examples like Nintendo selling games that are from thousands of hours of ROM dumping from fans. 99% of professional fans wouldn’t do it but we only need a few dozen after accessing the 35mm. I’m probably too optimistic but I think it’s the only way we will get something.
February 5, 2017 at 9:30 am
Do you understand anything that’s been told to you previously about this? You sound like an Axanar fan trapped in a bubble believing that this franchise belongs to you and that you can do anything with it when in reality , it’s not yours and you can’t do anything with it except be a consumer of it like everybody else.
If you all wanted to see Deep Space Nine on Blu-Ray (or any other older show), you all should have bought the Next Generation Blu-Ray sets at the original prices as much as possible, making it a big sales hit and showing CBS that there’s money to be made in remastering older shows and putting them on Blu-Ray/4K. But you all didn’t, and so, there’s this consequence that you all can’t live with. However, live with it, you must. And no amount of crowdfunding to get amateurs to do the remastering work is ever going to happen.
February 5, 2017 at 11:15 am
I think your busting the wrong crowds balls here. I’d be willing to wager 9/10 people commenting here did buy the TNG blurays early. Go over to the pirate and netflix forums if you wanna aim your negativity more accurately. Your right it’s a business decision, a short term one. The show may not make the money back upon initial release but they will be selling it to audiences for generations yet. Unless it looks like ass because it’s DVD.
February 17, 2017 at 5:29 pm
My so-called ‘negativity’ is reality delivered as a bucket of cold water; you people are just as deluded as the Axanar people are. None of you seem to get that you all don’t own this franchise , you’re all just consumers of it , like I am. If you want to see this happen, there has to be an interest shown, and it should have been at the cash register buying the TNG Blu-Ray sets. Money talks, and entitlement/(fan) bullshit walks.
August 16, 2017 at 10:31 am
It’s really sad you can’t see you’re as delusional as you repeatedly accuse others here of being. Reading your excessively redundant posts you can’t seem to refrain from making, all back to back, make you appear almost a raving lunatic, especially when resorting to the insults you have like the spoiled child you pretend to be speaking out against.
It doesn’t matter what is or isn’t possible. These people are speaking of wishes, hopes and dreams. There’s no crime in posting up about how each of these individuals would love to see A, B and C happen in any number of X, Y and Z ways. It sure doesn’t hurt anything for this community to get together and discuss that, either. No one cares about your “bucket of cold water” or your bitter rantings. Leave it alone. The Trek community doesn’t need a one man army of Capitalism Police.
As for your argument that anyone who dreamed of a DS9 BluRay release should have run right out and bought the full priced TNG releases to support the venture, I will argue against you with three simple points:
1) Not all DS9 fans are TNG fans;
2) Not all series’ seasonal releases ever see a full run on disc, and people like me would rather wait and make sure the entire series gets completed before finding out we’ll be left hanging halfway through a show and never have it all available (Mad About You being a prime example).
3) After already having purchased the VHS episodes, then the DVD seasons, and then yet another DVD collection, one can’t blame fans too much for hesitating to shell out yet again for a fourth version/format of just one Star Trek series.
August 16, 2017 at 9:39 pm
I see that reality can’t be faced by ‘fans’ like you. Oh well, too bad, life (and the franchise) will go on without you this September 24th.
August 16, 2017 at 10:06 pm
Well, we do appreciate you taking the time to explain everything to us though as we wish to sincerely apologize to you for being just too stupid to understand. It must be hard for you!
Let’s hope we’ll all get smarter and then, perhaps, we can talk to Dusty on a peer to peer basis. Otherwise, it’s just too hard on him to have to descend to our level.
August 16, 2017 at 10:04 pm
Yeah Dusty! Go to your room before your Momma gets out the wooden spoon.
It seriously angers Dusty to encounter “deluded” people. I wonder why, and I hope he outgrows it before having a stroke.
February 14, 2017 at 7:04 pm
I would much rather buy a DS9 box than a TNG box. Heck, I’d pay right now for a product I’ll only get in a couple of years. I think TNG is good, but I love DS9. Why should I buy something at full price that I don’t want that much? In the end CBS would say… oh, not enough sales, we’re not going to do DS9.
Crowdfunding would be the best option: a) They can estimate the interest. b) People would already give them the money to do it! Where is the risk?
February 15, 2017 at 2:56 am
You’re not going to succeed at getting crowd-funding for this show to be on DVD, ever; this isn’t Axanar . And as CBS owns this franchise, it’s theirs to do with as they want, which means that if and when they feel that there’s a profit in doing this, they’ll do it. As I said already, this is a business, not a charity, and you people need to be adult enough to learn and understand that.
February 15, 2017 at 2:14 pm
If they are not doing it, it’s because CBS wants to screw with fans or is terrible at doing business, or they are still trying to bully people into buying the TNG Blu Rays.
They can, probably have already calculated how much DS9 would cost to transfer. They can also calculate, how much it costs to produce the boxes and ship them to funders. Say it costs 20 million to remaster, and another 20 dollar per box to produce and ship. Set the price at $120 for the entire season, and they’ll need 200000 people who are willing to get the box. CBS can launch the campaign. They don’t even have to do any ads, fan/news sites and social media will take care of that. If not enough people sign up, CBS can say: Told ya so, and that’s the end of it. No DS9 in HD. If however enough people fund the project, CBS gets the money and remasters the show. At least the cost of doing it is covered, and if more people fund it, they make a profit. And then they have a show that they can put on CBS All Access, drawing in subscriptions. They have boxes they can put into retail stores, perhaps at higher prices (that’s why you fund such a project in the first place). And they have a show that they can sell for syndication, or to Netflix or Amazon or whoever wants it. And if they put in some marketing effort, it’s a rather modern show that appeals more to current audiences than it did to audiences back in the 90s.
Basically: Possible Ka-Ching without any risk! It makes business sense to do a Kickstarter campaign, it makes NO business sense not to do it. Maybe you haven’t understood crowdfunding…?
If everyone had bought the TNG boxes, they still could have claimed not enough people bought it. And I suspect that’s what they would do, given how they resist doing DS9.
February 16, 2017 at 4:31 pm
Please go and take business courses before you speak on this subject again. There is no market (in CBS’s eyes) to remaster Deep Space Nine for Blu-Ray or 4K. All of what you said is TL;DR and then some. As I said already, CBS Studios and Paramount Home Entertainment are businesses, not charities; how hard is it for you all to get that?
February 17, 2017 at 12:45 am
It is not TL;DR, because clearly you must be brain dead. Read my post before you reply with your BS again. With crowdfunding, CBS is getting PAID FOR THE ENTIRE PROJECT BEFORE THEY SPEND A SINGLE CENT! There is no risk! If it costs them 20 million, they get paid 20 million, and then start. If it costs them 50 million, they get paid that much before they start work on it. NO RISK. Or they can set the price to be higher than what it costs to do. How the frack is that a charity? They don’t start work before they are fully paid to do it, and can be sure to make a profit. It is what enables tiny little companies to do bigger projects.
How hard is it to for you to get that? Learn to read! Jesus.
February 17, 2017 at 5:19 pm
CBS isn’t going to accept crowdfunding monies to remaster DS9 , no matter how hard you and others blabber about it. And I’m not going to read your TL;DR post because it’s nonsense and wouldn’t be done by any corporate executive worth their salt.
As I (and probably others) have said, <bCBS is not a charity . If you all wanted to see DS9 remastered and on Blu-Ray, you all should’ve bought the Blu-Ray TNG sets, <band at the original prices. But you all didn’t and so, CBS won’t be taking any risks or financial baths just so that a bunch of nerds can get their nostalgia freak on. That’s life, and that’s also capitalism.
February 19, 2017 at 4:42 am
a) How can you know that what I wrote was nonsense if you haven’t read it?
b) Ah, you mean like the execs at: Heineken, GE, Hasbro, Pfizer, Unilever and Whirlpool? Yeah they must be terrible and useless.
c) If CBS doesn’t do it, it is not because of capitalism or because they are such great business men, but because of pride or stupidity. Crowdfunding is risk free, and if the execs are right, crowdfunding DS9 will fail and they have a way of shutting up fans. If not, they will earn money. Either way, win for them. Plus crowdfunding is also free advertising (guess why some companies that really don’t need it do it for a product they know will be successful anyway).
d) Nostalgia freak? You can say that about TNG. That show is as dated as hell. DS9 however, structure and content wise, is as current as any show aired today. The only difference from modern shows is the longer than usual seasons and the aspect ratio. Otherwise it could be any recent Netflix or HBO show. Thus it can also appeal to newer viewers.
But you haven’t reached this point I suppose, because you’re simply a mindless, stupid troll.
January 5, 2018 at 12:02 am
Only CBS can authorize crowdfunding fans cannot use crowdfunding because only CBS can do that and CBS will never use crowdfunding
February 21, 2017 at 5:32 am
It is TL; DR, and most importantly, it’s unrealistic, and nobody worth their salt as an executive at CBS (or any other media company) would ever consider it-many of them didn’t get where they were catering to fans who want something ‘just because’; they became what they were because they had to make hard business decisions so that the company didn’t go out of business/bleed into the red. That’s life, reality and capitalism.
August 16, 2017 at 10:07 pm
You should listen to Dusty, he’s an economist and he’s much smarter then anyone else here. It’s a priveledge for you to be spoken to by Dusty.
February 26, 2017 at 3:11 am
I read it, and it’s still unrealistic nonsense.
May 18, 2017 at 2:22 pm
YOU GREEN-BLOODED, POINTY-EARED, INHUMAN SON OF A BITCH!!!!!!!!!!!!!
January 4, 2018 at 11:59 pm
You clearly don’t understand business they have to make a profit deep space nine was never that popular putting it on Blu will cause them to lose money
April 29, 2017 at 2:53 pm
Say one more discouraging thing, Dusty, and perhaps today is a good day for YOU to die!!!!!!
April 29, 2017 at 4:03 pm
What are you going to do to me, habidaq ? Kill me with a mek’leth? Go back to playing with your mommy on the holodeck.
April 30, 2017 at 11:00 am
If you were any other man, I WOULD KILL YOU WHERE YOU STAND FOR INSULTING ME!!!!!!!!!!!!
July 15, 2017 at 11:22 pm
Frak you, diaper baby.
Yours need changing!
July 17, 2017 at 1:23 am
I’m not the one acting like a baby.
July 17, 2017 at 6:13 pm
You sure cry like one.
July 17, 2017 at 6:23 pm
But in space everyone can hear you scream like one!
July 17, 2017 at 6:14 pm
See what you mean>
January 5, 2018 at 12:03 am
I just reported you for making a death threat
February 6, 2017 at 11:27 pm
Even if they don’t composite and edit and do the visual effects work for each series… I kinda hope that they do scan in and preserve the original film so that they have the option to do an HD release one day. I was really saddened when the article mentioned someone had the original VFX models for DS9 and Voyager for long enough to do a rendering while the STNG remaster was going on… only to lose those assets by now in a hard drive crash. That just goes to show, you should always make backups. You might lose important parts of Star Trek history after holding on to them for nearly 20 years 🙁
February 2, 2017 at 4:03 pm
If CBS don’t want to spend the money and time required to remaster DS9, it should just hand over all the material from the show to a third party effects house or to professionaly qualified fans who can do the job over whatever length of time it takes, and then keep the profit from sales. Typical corporate bean counter thinking that the show should be lost to time instead of doing what’s required to save it.
You’d be dead before it would be done
February 5, 2017 at 10:48 pm
Sides, I’m sure the agreements they have with the editor’s unions would prohibit this. The studios can’t just give out their product for people to work with.
February 8, 2017 at 10:17 am
That’s as maybe, but no changes are being made to the original work, at least not until all the visual effects became wholly CGI around season 4 onwards. Those visuals would have to be redone from scratch as most people seem to think the files have either been lost, of were only ever rendered in SD.
February 2, 2017 at 4:04 pm
Thanks for this very interesting article. It’s sad to see “The Roddenberry Vault” release as a ‘good’ example of a special extras. The Vault release was a poor joke played on fans. Very little in what was promised and another release of episodes we already had on various media. CBS/Paramount are milking their cash cow with new releases, offering nothing new and just giving us what we already have.
February 5, 2017 at 9:40 am
CBS is administering Star Trek like it should be expected to; no more, and no less.
Robert Simandl
February 2, 2017 at 4:11 pm
So… anyone know if the upcoming DS9 and Voyager DVD’s will look and sound significantly better than the existing versions? Obviously they won’t look as good as the TNG blu-rays, but will they be an improvement over what’s there now?
February 2, 2017 at 5:25 pm
No they are exactly the same, just a new set of box art
February 3, 2017 at 1:33 pm
Nope. They can’t be, there isn’t anything they can do to make them look better.
If you run them through a Blu-Ray player you’ll get the upscaling effect, which may make them look a *bit* better.
February 5, 2017 at 9:42 am
If you run them through a Blu-Ray player hooked up to a HDTV, you’ll probably get a great picture-you never know, especially if you don’t try.
February 6, 2017 at 10:57 am
The existing DVDs do look a bit better run through a BR player hooked up to my 40″ HDTV, certainly better than the Netflix streams. Also, the Netflix streams are automatically stretched to Widescreen so I have to manually adjust them, which I don’t with the DVDs.
David Alexander McDonald
February 3, 2017 at 4:34 pm
It’s essentially just the seven season boxes packaged together in a couple of giant clamshell cases — I have the UK versions of the Enterprise BR and Voyager boxes, and those are just the old discs repackaged. The Voyager box design is pretty crap; the Enterprise box is better than the US one, though.
Andy Miller
February 2, 2017 at 4:46 pm
Hmmm I wonder if anyone has considered a serious Kickstarter campaign for these? I would think DS9 may muster enough backers, certainly quite popular with the fans…
February 2, 2017 at 5:15 pm
My thoughts exactly! I may start one post Discovery launch, if there’s no one to step up the plate. The buzz of it all may just carry it to fruition. The price tag is steep though AND it takes years. My bet is we are not going to see it, unless there’s some billionaire trekkie outhere willing the foot up the bill. If I were that three-comma guy, I know I would. 🙂
February 3, 2017 at 1:35 pm
You wouldn’t be able to do it without CBS’s permission, and you need the original film negative, which is stored in a joint Paramount-CBS storage facility under a salt mine in Pennsylvania (I’m not even joking on this). You can’t take the existing DVDs or streamed files and rework them, the resolution isn’t there.
February 3, 2017 at 1:49 pm
Yes, unfortunately. I meant it as, what Elon Musk would call, a “forcing function”. It would be sort of Kickstarter ad campaign, showing CBS the fanbase interest. A way of generating buzz and getting the conversation started. CBS would probably have to foot most of the bill in any case. It is not a sure thing by any stretch of imagination, but CBS left to its own devices will probably never feel the need to get the ball rolling. Forcing functions are a powerful tool.
February 5, 2017 at 9:51 am
Kickstarter campaigns won’t work for this-this show belongs to CBS, and they will do this in-house when they feel like doing so and when they can make a profit off of it -how hard is this to understand?
February 22, 2017 at 12:03 am
You aren’t telling people anything new they don’t know about business and finance. Unless you work at CBS you are guessing at what current management think’s about crowd funding, even if they are again’st it times change and managers change.
August 16, 2017 at 9:34 pm
I feel that I have to because people here aren’t getting the message and are being bratty little children who want something no matter what.
August 16, 2017 at 10:02 pm
YES! We need you set us straight Dusty because without you we’d all be lost. And we wouldn’t know what to think or what to do. We need you Dusty!
August 16, 2017 at 10:01 pm
Oh no, Dusty knows things! He’s privvy to all kinds of important things. Just read his posts. He’ll tell you what and how to think. And Dusty is right, he is always right. It’s a priveledge for you to be spoken to by Dusty. Why can’t you understand this simple fact?
May 5, 2017 at 12:06 am
Hi Dusty – how about you stop sucking CBS’s dick? No-one really wants to hear your thoughts on the matter. Please go back to your Mom’s basement. It’s where you belong.
August 16, 2017 at 9:32 pm
I’m not sucking anybody’s dick as much as you are being a dick who can’t and won’t listen to reason because you’re a deluded fanboy with a sense of entitlement. You don’t own this franchise, CBS does, and they’re forging ahead with a new show and new movies. If you can’t accept that fact, then you’ll have to do without Star Trek, and watch something else, or spend time in your room crying like a little boy who didn’t get a favorite toy from Mom & Dad.
August 16, 2017 at 9:59 pm
Sad, just so sad. Poor Dusty, everyone can see it except for him.
Alex Huffman
February 2, 2017 at 5:49 pm
Instead of a Kickstarter, why not have the fans actually do the work themselves? I bet there are plenty of VFX professionals who would take on this project out of love if they were given access to the raw materials.
Derrik Pates
February 3, 2017 at 12:27 am
As if Paramount/CBS would ever consider providing all that material to anyone who wasn’t under a very expensive, airtight contract. Not a chance in hell.
February 3, 2017 at 2:32 am
Well, they obviously don’t care about said material anyway, since they don’t want to spend the $$$ to restore it. All of it’s going to rot in a vault anyway, so why not? Media and other corporations greedily hoarding their older property even though its not profitable for them anymore (or won’t have any chance of making them lose any money if they were to release it it to the public or subjects outside of a contract) has always annoyed me to no end. Pure capitalist greed IMO.
February 3, 2017 at 9:17 am
Then why not have Netflix do it? We’ve heard that Star Trek gets a lot of stream time (myself included). I mean they spend $7M on EACH EPISODE of Star Trek Discovery. I bet the ST library streaming rights aren’t cheap either.
February 5, 2017 at 10:00 am
Netflix wasn’t called in to do a Star Trek show with CBS, and they don’t own Star Trek -plus, they’ve got other shows already.
January 5, 2018 at 12:10 am
Netflix is a streaming service you idiot they don’t do any remastering the remastering can only be done by the studio
February 3, 2017 at 1:36 pm
They’d need to convince CBS and Paramount to give them the original film negatives from their high-maintenance storage facility. I do not consider this a very likely outcome.
February 5, 2017 at 10:10 am
adamwhitehead, you’re wasting time with these people; they don’t seem to understand reality at all.
February 5, 2017 at 9:56 am
Alex, do you understand any concepts of reality at all regarding this that have been explained to you and others here? This is not Star Trek: Axanar , and oh yeah, it isn’t your franchise .
February 5, 2017 at 7:29 pm
Wow. Can’t even enjoy a little hypothetical conversation anywhere without running into a sour grape. I bet your really fun at parties, Dusty.
Ace Stephens
February 10, 2017 at 1:00 am
From the look of things here, he’s a total cynic who denies possibilities while clinging to probabilities as the only reality (and thinking he should “shout down” others as a result).
For instance, acting like a Kickstarter permitted by CBS is absurd, as though no company with ownership of a property has ever run one. Acting like pitching such a thing is a “fan film” mentality or people are suggesting it should be done without CBS somehow when, in fact, that’s notably far from the case.
May 5, 2017 at 12:07 am
Dusty doesn’t get invited to anyone’s party. Never has, never will.
February 5, 2017 at 8:28 pm
The film shots would still be upscaled standard definition, and the composite live-action/VFX shots would be a hideous mismatch of resolutions. You need the original film materials for this to work.
CANADAMETALFAN
February 2, 2017 at 6:12 pm
Great article. Explains things well.
I bought the tng sets as they were coming out and enterprise as well, they are the best sets I have ever owned. The features make them extra special.
Any difference between the individual season sets and the series box set?
February 3, 2017 at 10:41 am
Same content as the individual seasons. the only difference is the consolidated packaging.
Eric Cheung
February 2, 2017 at 8:56 pm
This didn’t have any information I didn’t know, but if you like this article, you’ll enjoy this documentary I saw on PBS a few years ago:
https://nofilmschool.com/2013/02/side-by-side-film-digital-documentary-keanu-reeves-netflix
Foomandoonian
February 2, 2017 at 10:00 pm
I’d happily settle for a more limited DS9 and Voy release. Just pick the standout 2-4 episodes from each season. I know that would be tricky with the more serialised DS9, but that show still had many classic stand-alone episodes that could be featured.
February 2, 2017 at 10:51 pm
“It’s Only a Paper Moon” would be one heck of an episode to have restored.
February 2, 2017 at 10:25 pm
I have my DS9 & VOY DVD sets I have had for years. I’ll live.
February 2, 2017 at 10:45 pm
It was endlessly frustrating for me to be on Trek forums and blu-ray forums and see people complain the remastered TNG sets were too expensive or not worth it. The difference was amazing and the project was super expensive. Also those blu-ray sets were cheaper than the DVD sets were 15 years of inflation before that!
The sad fact is no one wants to pay for media in the 2010’s. It’s free if you have no morals, and cheap if you like streaming, and that is that. It makes me sad.
February 2, 2017 at 10:49 pm
Yes, they were expensive, I’ll agree with you on that but even though they were expensive they were still worth every penny. Even the intro with The Enterprise coming from the left and into the center of the frame at about 30 seconds into the intro was just jaw dropping. That scene alone was worth it all.
February 3, 2017 at 1:56 am
I wasn’t complaining they were expensive. Did you mean to reply to someone else?
February 3, 2017 at 9:37 am
I was agreeing with the people who you said it was expensive. Expensive it may have been but it was still worth every penny.
February 5, 2017 at 10:17 am
Yet, they expect to get similar sets for Deep Space Nine just like that and ‘just because’. People are plain deluded these days.
February 7, 2017 at 7:34 pm
No one wants to pay for media anymore. I have friends who torrent all their TV shows and then complain when one gets cancelled. There is zero logic or perspective.
Dominik Wagner
February 9, 2017 at 10:17 am
I wonder if said friends also go to work each day without expecting a paycheck…sometimes I just don’t know that to say about the views of some people…
July 9, 2017 at 6:31 pm
Shows often get cancelled for reasons that have nothing to do with ratings though. Take Last Man Standing for example, had amazing ratings for a network TV show that aired on Friday nights, but because CBS did not want to renew the contract another season won’t happen.
July 9, 2017 at 6:32 pm
I only do that for shows where that’s literally the ONLY way I can watch them, there’s far too many shows that never got DVD releases and are not on any streaming platforms(or they were only released on DVD overseas, like with Malcolm in the Middle, and I don’t have one of those fancy multi-region DVD players) so I have to resort to illicit streaming sites to watch shows like Drew Carey Show(main season why most of that show isn’t on DVD is for music licensing reasons)
May 5, 2017 at 12:09 am
Dusty – news flash – you’re a Moron!
May 26, 2017 at 2:26 pm
More like you are.
July 9, 2017 at 6:33 pm
No you are.
August 16, 2017 at 9:58 pm
Yes, only Dusty knows the truth.
February 9, 2017 at 10:15 am
Absolutely, it’s just a though sell nowadays in the age of free music streaming and cheap media streaming by the likes of Netflix and Spotify, people are spoiled. But I was surprised that this project seems to have been such a flop, TNG was one of the best-rated shows worldwide during it’s run and is fondly remembered by many.
If CBS couldn’t make their money back with TNG, they sure as hell won’t with Voyager and DS9…which is a shame.
February 2, 2017 at 10:46 pm
Personally, this is very disheartening since Deep Space Nine was and will always be my favorite among all of the Star Trek TV series. I don’t know why DS9 is, maybe it fits more into my cynical nature in the sense that it shows a more darker side of the Federation; that the Federation wasn’t all “Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy”. That when pushed into the corner, regardless of the fact that the Federation was supposed to be peaceful, even they could choose to do the shall we say… “not so nice things” to get what needs to be done… done.
February 3, 2017 at 1:40 pm
I think DS9 is a very underrated show, although it’s certainly improved with age and its critical cachet has risen a lot. It’s aged better than Babylon 5 and it had a much better ending than BSG (which had a lot of the same writers involved), and its character development and story arcs were far better than any of the Star Trek shows before or after (although, arguably, TOS and TNG just edge it for individual classic episodes)
I put it down to the fact the DS9 had a regular cast of not just Federation personnel, but other people who were far more cynical about it (Quark and Garak’s legendary conversation in the S4 opening episode) and even villains, who turned out far more complex than they first appeared. I’m sorry they never got to make the “in the bunker” episode they were talking about, which would have just been 44 minutes of Damar, Weyoun and the Female Changeling sniping at one another.
February 4, 2017 at 11:56 am
I agree with everything you said except that it’s aged better than Babylon 5. We still pull that entire series out every couple of years. I think I’ve watched DS9 twice since it aired. I admit I like DS9 better now than when it aired, but Babylon 5 still holds up well (except for the FX, and WB has said similar things about remastering B5).
February 6, 2017 at 11:01 am
Yeah, I meant more in terms of production values: DS9 had three times the budget of B5 and it looks like it, the sets, makeup and effects absolutely put B5 to shame. B5 had a stronger, better-planned longterm story arc but it also took a while to get going. I find I can recommend people DS9 today and they’ll sit down and get into it, but they are mostly put off by the fact that B5 just looks a lot worse. Convincing them to stick with it, especially when it’s so talky, is a challenge.
Oddly, I found it easier to get them into it if they like SENSE8, since the’re already used to Straczynski’s way of writing dialogue and character.
February 2, 2017 at 11:58 pm
Why not get fans to do the VFX shots? Have a team working at CBS doing the scanning, the editing and supervising. Manage some of the VFX, but have an online community where fans do a lot of the work. Have strict guidelines for consistency. The same cgi models, the same settings in the same program. Individuals and groups of people can request certain shots. The community can review, vote offer suggestions under the supervision of a lead guy at CBS. Final is sent of to CBS for final rendering in their work flow. I reckon you’d find a fair few people open to partaking. Sure it’d take a lot longer, but it may be cheaper. I always thought something like this would have been a good way to redo the CGI for Babylon 5 so they could remaster that.
February 5, 2017 at 10:34 am
It’s been explained above by others why not already. Try and pay attention.
Jason Johnson
February 3, 2017 at 1:44 am
Great article and explanation. People don’t appreciate this level of work.
February 3, 2017 at 10:43 am
Thanks Jason. I appreciate the kind words.
Lathe of Heaven
February 3, 2017 at 11:27 pm
Hmmm, interesting that no one has mentioned the recent Blu-ray release of the X-Files… 🙂 Remember, that was SUPPOSED to be a lost cause AND, the first season of the X-Files was in 1993 🙂 [yes, that, I think DOES merit another smiley face]
I THINK what I read about the X-Files was that this couple (husband and wife I think) came up with a new, proprietary way in upscaling footage that was kind of revolutionary. I have the X-Files Blu-ray set, and let me tell you, when I watched the very first episode, the picture literally blew frigg’n my PANTS off! (I’ve since put them back on, so don’t worry…) And, I consider myself a fairly avid Videophile, and WOW, I was indeed quite impressed.
Sooooo… then…. let’s see now, what series was running at the exact same time…? Oh yes, I remember now…
DEEP SPACE NICE
(not to mention B-5)
February 6, 2017 at 11:03 am
THE X-FILES looked like it wasn’t going to happen and then they did it. It’s probably because of the way TNG opened up the pipeline, with the added ease that the X-FILES very rarely had digital effects (the odd CG spaceship here and there, the odd monster morph elsewhere). It was a much simpler, and much cheaper, remastering job than TNG.
Fox tried to apply the same methodology to remastering BUFFY and the project has completely fallen apart because BUFFY had a lot more effects work, lighting regrading and other things they didn’t taken into account.
February 6, 2017 at 5:17 pm
Yeah, figured as much… I was kind of HOPING that maybe their new ‘proprietary’ technology might of helped a little : ) Still looks frigg’n AMAZING!
February 6, 2017 at 5:33 pm
The bits I’ve seen of the Buffy HD remaster are absolutely terrible. Colour timing is off, effects have been poorly recreated, and some scenes even use alternate takes to the original versions. I’ll stick with my DVD set, even though S1 and 2 (shot on 16mm) look grainy as hell.
February 9, 2017 at 12:44 pm
Yup. That’s what’s annoying. A proper HD remaster would make Seasons 1 and 2 look so much better, and there’s a few scenes which are improved, but all of the mistakes they’ve made detract from the few bits they’ve done well. Deeply frustrating.
February 3, 2017 at 1:54 am
Im sure if some started a go fund me page we could get the money.
Scott Brantley
February 3, 2017 at 10:37 am
Damn the expense. CBS owes it to the fans to get this done for DS9 and VOY someday!
February 5, 2017 at 10:39 am
No, it doesn’t, at all. This is a business, not a charity for nerds.
May 5, 2017 at 12:12 am
You tell ’em Dusty! You go Girl!
February 3, 2017 at 12:09 pm
Fascinating! Thank you for reaching out to clarify
Impecunious Joe
February 3, 2017 at 1:15 pm
Looking for a bone here…
I know there are many fans who just couldn’t afford the TNG sets right off the bat, but still do want it all in high-def, and who are picking it up as they can (I’m one of them; I didn’t even have a Blu-ray player when most of the season sets first came out, but I recently kicked off my HD TV Trek library with the five “movie” discs of various TNG two-parters, and intend to get the full series as soon as circumstances permit). I know the initial sales weren’t what was hoped for, but is there any chance that if sales continue at a certain level, the project could eventually be seen a small sufficiently profitable to warrant revisiting the decision on the later shows?
February 6, 2017 at 11:06 am
The biggest mistake they made was waiting so long for the complete series box set. Everyone knew it was coming, so people held out for it. And it took the better part of two years after Season 7 was released for the complete set to come out in the US (in the UK the Season 7 set and the complete box set were released on the same day). Massive own goal and mistake.
But yes, in another 4-5 years, especially if DISCOVERY breaks out massively, they may revisit the figures and decide it is worth it at that point to remaster at least DS9. In 2008 they would have certainly said that it would be impossible to save TNG, but then the circumstances changed and it became doable.
February 6, 2017 at 5:35 pm
The best shot would come from huge fan support for Discovery, meaning, yes, subscribe to All Access if you’re in the States, and buy the show on DVD, Blu and/or digital when it becomes available.
February 10, 2017 at 1:19 am
I imagine a notably more expensive complete series boxset ($250 or so, average price – probably more MSRP), if released right when season 7 came out, would have sold quite well and be seen as a very good deal. As it is, the “after-the-fact”-release with the low price just seems like something tossed out there, with lower demand (perhaps since some “gave up” for streaming in the meantime) and a general disinterest (from CBS and maybe some fans) about it.
February 10, 2017 at 9:14 am
Yup, and that’s crazy. They should have realised many fans would be holding out for the complete box set and factored that into their plans to make a profit or make back the investment they put in. And then they blew their own feet off by selling the HD versions to both streaming services and international broadcasters before the Blu-Rays had even all come out, further discouraging people from buying the box sets.
Rather than blaming “lack of interest”, CBS should really have come up with a coherent and sensible release strategy.
Csere Mihaly
February 3, 2017 at 1:19 pm
Great article and also very depressing for me as a huge DS9 fan. But honestly, I would buy Voyager too and they should do Voyager first because it is easier I think. The over all low success of the first time TNG sales are easy to explain: 110 USD for a season was too much. I can understand that they wanted to get back their investment but this should have been calculated more with a lower price that would have resulted in more sales (50-60 USD / Season max as with any modern TV series) and the rest of the money should have been calculated from the re-sales of the TV rights . Too much of the invested money was expected from the fans in the first week. They should have thought more in the long term with a smaller price than what they have done. (I have payed for every single season at the full price on launch day). The current full series 100 USD price is much more user friendly.
As for crowd funding: I have never in my life have payed in any crowd founding but I would pay for this on the first day, and not just 10 USD
I would also pay for a best of re-mastered, like the best 10 or 20 episodes from the series.
February 5, 2017 at 3:07 pm
@impecuniousjoe:disqus, @cseremihaly:disqus: do the two of you have reading comprehension problems? And where do you get the idea that ‘too much of the invested money was expected from the fans in the first week’, Csere?
February 5, 2017 at 6:34 pm
I hope not, but I’d like to think that if I do have such comprehension problems, I at least compensate for them with something approaching good manners.
All I did was ask a question about something not addressed in the article. I would agree it is abundantly clear from Burnett’s extensive discussion that the sales of the ST:TNG BDs have fallen well short of hopes and expectations, and that for that reason there is presently no business case for extending the same treatment to the two remaining Trek series presently stuck in standard-def. However comma there do remain some areas of uncertainty – possibly not uncertain to Burnett, CBS, and others directly involved with the release, but areas of uncertainty to us, the readers.
Exactly how far short of hopes and/or expectations have sales been? What numbers, if attained, would suffice to justify comparable HD remasters of the other two shows? (Yes, I’m aware they almost certainly don’t wish to release specific sales data for business competitive and/or legal reasons, and don’t expect them to; I’m merely pointing out that it’s something most of us don’t know, and thus might reasonably wonder about).
Perhaps I did indeed miss it in the piece, but I didn’t see it made clear even whether the ST:TNG BDs have actually lost money, just broken even, or made a minor profit – only that they haven’t been a huge, hoped-for success.
It is also not clear to what extent ongoing, future sales of the ST:TNG BDs may affect things. Presumably they were expecting x sales by a point in time y, and fell well short of that, but aside from our not knowing just how short, we don’t know whether additional sales will have any effect, or just what sort of sales figures would be needed to make it happen if so. That’s all I’m asking about.
February 6, 2017 at 11:55 am
Dusty it is pretty easy to answer you: the blu-ray disks of TNG came at twice the price of any current TV show with 20 episode season. It was not justified. If they wanted high sales they wouldn’t have thrown those prices at fans. They thought they can go with the high price tag because the fans will pay for it so they have included in the sales plan the remastered work too … I based my conclusion on economics logic and how some investors are trying to get back the invested money in just a few months to a year (like any new tech and so on). So it isn’t based on some actual information, I just know a few people in tech development and this is how things work at that side: they want to get the investment ASAP and a product is not successful if this doesn’t happen in a few months. I just concluded this is how CBS has thought too.
February 6, 2017 at 11:14 am
Figures are hard to come by, but Burnett is being slightly disingenuous: sales of the Blu-Rays started off excellently, with Season 1 selling over 300,000 copies in the US (apparently they also did excellently in Germany, and decently in the UK). That’s huge for an expensive new edition of a 25-year-old TV show. Not too shabby at all. But by later on the sales dropped off a lot. That’s baffling as Seasons 1 and 2 are by far the weakest and Seasons 3-6 are generally held to be the best. More people wanted to see “Angel One” in HD than “The Best of Both Worlds” or “The Inner Light”? In what universe?
What did happen is that the PR and marketing spend for each box set dropped, with corresponding loss of awareness and hence sales. They also ran into another problem. They were doing cinema screenings of certain episodes to show how awesome they were, but then the agents of the actors from those episodes got in touch to demand more money, because cinema screenings were not part of the original contracts. So I think CBS lost money on those screenings as a result and stopped them after Season 3. You also had the problem is that they started increasing the speed of releasing the seasons as the pipelines got better, so circa the release of Season 4 or 5 people started realising they could wait just 12-18 months and get the complete series for not much more than the price of the individual sets. CBS screwed that up by delaying the complete box set repeatedly and then releasing the show to streaming services before it came out, costing them a lot of revenue.
The release methodology really was flawed. Fox and HBO learned from that and released both THE X-FILES, THE SOPRANOS and THE WIRE as complete HD box sets all in one go for a much more realistic price (still expensive, but not much more than the average), and did much better. But then none of those remasterings were as expensive and complex as TNG’s.
February 3, 2017 at 1:27 pm
What’s annoying about this is that a lot of the cost could have been avoided if they’d rolled straight from TNG into DS9. A lot of the expense was down to startup costs: the cost of starting up the process, finding the right methodology and pipelines, developing the needed software, understanding the problems and resolving them etc, and then doing Season 1 alone came to $12 million. So if the total cost of the entire series was $20 million, that means the start-up costs were more than 50% of the entire cost of the project. All of the start-up costs could have been avoided by simply rolling straight into DS9 and they could have done most of the show for a lot cheaper.
It’s also worth remembering that with, I believe, two exceptions (the Defiant in the new title sequence used from Season 4 onwards, and the solar ship in Season 3), DS9 did not use large numbers of CG ships and shots until the end of Season 5. Yes, some of those battles in Seasons 6 and 7 were huge and would be complex to render, but there’s also not a lot of them. Almost all of DS9’s effects for the first five seasons, and quite a lot in the latter two seasons, could be updated and remastered like TNG’s were. With Voyager it’s simply untenable: Voyager started routinely using CGI in the Season 3 finale but it had quite a few CG shots and scenes across the first three seasons and then completely in Seasons 4-7, which is a titanic amount of work.
I honestly think they should roll out all the efforts for DS9: as a much more heavily serialised show, it fits the modern day Netflix binge-watching habits better, its critical reception and cachet has risen remarkably over the years and, although it didn’t do TNG numbers, its ratings were pretty damn high (and far above Voyager’s).
February 3, 2017 at 1:41 pm
I know it’s not the same thing as a true HD remaster, but why not upscale the NTSC tapes and apply a sharpness filter? Doctor Who and some other series did the same thing (Doctor Who’s first 4 seasons were only shot in SD) and while it’s not the same quality as a true HD remaster, it still looks WAY WAY better than the DVD versions because there’s no outdated DVD compression. Upscaling from a DVD will always lead to lots of macro-blocking, especially if you apply a sharpness filter AFTER the DVD compression, while upscaling from the original tape, applying a sharpness filter and THEN compressing with x264 at 1080p will lead to much better results. I have both the DVDs and the BluRays at home and the difference in picture quality is significant! With the BluRays I sometimes can’t even tell they are not really HD. Same with other series that were only released as SD-upscaled versions.
You wouldn’t even need to sell them on BluRays, you could just sell them to streaming services like Netflix or air them on TV. The total cost would only be a tiny, tiny fraction of a true HD remaster and it’s still way better than nothing at all.
February 6, 2017 at 11:34 am
They tried this on TNG, it’s on the Season 1 documentary. For some scenes it worked fine, for others it actually emphasised problems with poor overlaying of effects or matte lines, and for anything with visual effects like phasers or transporter beams it really looked awful. They couldn’t get consistently good results.
For more recent shows it works because they were filmed and edited with much better equipment, like DOCTOR WHO or the way they upscaled the CG and composite scenes for FIREFLY. For stuff filmed in the 1980s or earlier it doesn’t seem to work as effectively.
February 3, 2017 at 2:00 pm
Very enlightening, and explains a lot. Extremely frustrating, too; the ‘physical media is dead’ movement has always driven me crazy, but to know that it’s killing the market for projects like this, and special features in general…
February 3, 2017 at 4:43 pm
One way the fans could get this started is to build a massive library of CG assets based upon what is known and needed from the episodes. Ships, planets, phaser fire, EVERYTHING built into a huge online resource that is carefully curated, so there is only one accepted version of Ship A, one of planet B, etc. With that done, CBS would be more likely to take on the project because a HUGE portion of the work would be done ahead of time, and at no charge. Perhaps some of the big names like Okuda and Burnett could be enlisted to be the curators of the assets?
February 5, 2017 at 3:09 pm
Nobody at CBS is interested in fans doing anything for the show restoration-wise, period.
May 5, 2017 at 12:20 am
Dusty speaks for CBS once more! Dusty knows everything. If you don’t know, just ask Dusty, she’ll set you straight!
February 3, 2017 at 4:52 pm
Man this is so tragic. How about a Kickstarter for DS9 on blu?
February 3, 2017 at 7:52 pm
Utterly fascinating process and quite the incredible achievement. Thanks for the great article!
February 4, 2017 at 3:10 am
isn’t this the reason why none of the director’s and special editions of the movies were released in hd? i would love to see tmp’s director’s cut in hd.
February 6, 2017 at 11:36 am
The Motion Picture I think has its own problems, like the CG models were not designed to stand up to proper HD scrutiny so would need to be redone from scratch again.
Star Trek II (The Wrath of Khan) was given a proper, remastered HD re-release a few months ago though, and it looks excellent.
SFSeries&Movies
February 4, 2017 at 3:45 am
Great article, clarifies it a lot for me at least!
FightingMongooses
February 4, 2017 at 4:01 am
Hey CBS, if you’re too cheap to do a remaster of all of DS9 and Voyager how about a “best of” HD collection? Stuff like “Duet” and “In the Pale Moonlight” from Deep Space Nine and “Scorpion” from Voyager.
February 5, 2017 at 10:53 pm
I would guess if they did that, the fanbase would think they were getting the whole series anyway, which like the article said, they can’t do the whole of each show.
February 4, 2017 at 12:20 pm
I’ve got think there’s some high net worth 9 figure Trek fan out there that would cut the check simply to go down in fandom as “the guy (or gal)” that supplied DS9 and Voyager in 2K for the masses
February 6, 2017 at 11:37 am
As someone pointed out, the King of Jordan is a massive TREK fan and even got a cameo on VOYAGER. He might have bigger fish to fry these days though.
Andrew Kasch
February 4, 2017 at 1:14 pm
CBS needs to crowdfund the first season restoration of Deep Space Nine as an experiment. If that’s successful, then they can do one a year for as long as they’re able to bankroll it. Everything they earn after would be profit and these shows finally get the preservation they deserve. Trek fans have shelled out over $1mil + for fan films… This one is a no brainer.
August 16, 2017 at 9:37 pm
CBS doesn’t have to do anything but forge ahead with Star Trek: Discovery . If you can’t support it, too fraking bad; that’s all the Star Trek you and other bratty obdurate ‘adult’ fans like you are getting. Put the frak up, or please (if possible) shut the frak up and accept reality.
August 16, 2017 at 10:09 pm
Dusty has spoken. Therefore, it must be so.
August 18, 2017 at 2:00 am
Marvin The Moron believes that he’s the master of all Star Trek -therefore, CBS must remaster Deep Space Nine and put it on Blu-Ray and 4K ‘because’. He also isn’t adult enough to accept Discovery or the new movies, because they violate sacred ‘canon’ that he and others like him believe is similar to a religious text which is sacred.
August 18, 2017 at 10:37 pm
Once more Dusty has departed his throne and descended to us poor little people to grace us with his presence, insight and wisdom.
February 4, 2017 at 1:18 pm
I find this quite odd. Here’s why.
Many TV stations around the globe rely on the (multiple) Trek series to underpin their channels. You would think that licensing new Trek HD versions for HD channels would (part) pay for the remaining restorations as well as bring in some dosh from Blu Ray/UHD sales? TV is a long chain business. They can’t keep showing SD versions forever as those channels become defunct and move to HD only. That’d mean we’d never see DS9 or Voyager or have to put up with them being ‘upscaled’ from SD.
Are CBS currently giving Trek away for peanuts to these channels? 40 Million is chump change for 14 series (DS9 & Voyager) when it costs 100 million for one series of Game Of Thrones.
February 10, 2017 at 1:51 am
Seriously, where is the licensing money from these things going? Sure, pay those involved in the show and they need a bit for investors…but what of the rest? Certainly, if nothing else, a few years’ worth of those fees could support the start of a remaster (one season with an eye toward a second) which could then fetch a mildly-increased price to be licensed – possibly tackling a couple seasons at a time might snowball into increased profits (from that licensing) within a couple years.
I seriously don’t understand what’s going on. Sure, Paramount struggles except for Transformers and Mission: Impossible making tons of money but CBS basically makes money on these shows for free right now. Why not increase how much over the next decade with a reasonable investment back into the product?
There has to be something we’re missing here if it’s not just (short-term) greed getting in the way of (long-term) profits, as is unfortunately and ironically the case in many corporate realms.
February 4, 2017 at 1:34 pm
So that explains why, when I watch Voyager on channel BBC America, it doesn’t look sharp or crisp.
Robert Anthony
February 4, 2017 at 1:36 pm
This, while enlightening, made me very sad. To think of DS9 and Voyager just fading-off into the distance of forgotten television. : (
February 4, 2017 at 7:39 pm
There is a simple answer- CROWDSOURCE. CBS merely has to dump the available film negatives at a cheapo scanning facility in India, and then make the raw footage available online for reconstruction by fans working for free. The truth is that so-called ‘amateurs’ know how to use computer tools vastly better than 98% of the pros exployed at great expense by CBS. Editing footage is utterly trivial today. The VFX work is certainly not, but there are legions of fans who can knock out decent quality CGI quite quickly.
Essentially as volunteers prove themselves with one episode, they would be given improved access to work on further episodes. All volunteers who contribute would be rewarded with free access to all the improved episodes. The new work would remain 100% the property of the original owners- and CBS would switch streaming services to the new versions.
February 4, 2017 at 11:11 pm
$40 million for 2 major groundbreaking fan TV series to be remastered from scratch with all new visual effects? Cumulatively 14 seasons and almost 400 episodes of television?
How is that not a f*cking bargain?
These two TV shows are still being licensed on networks and streaming services across the entire planet. Tens of thousands of people are dressing up around the planet going to conventions for the shows 20 years later. And this is not a good investment?
And as a bunch of people have mentioned here over the past day, crowdfunding would be a no-brainer that would be achieved immediately to subsidize the effort.
This would seem like an obvious lock for anyone paying attention. Just the fact that we are commenting on and reading an article about it should tell you something.
Are any insiders in the industry reading these forms or not?
Holy smokes.
February 5, 2017 at 5:04 am
I was thinking the same thing. When I heard the amount, I said “and so what’s the problem”. CSB is still thinking well cant make that up in Bluray sales. As if they need to make it up on day one…sigh.
February 5, 2017 at 3:10 pm
The insiders don’t give a shitt, thay have other things to do with their time, like you and others commenting should.
February 5, 2017 at 3:29 pm
Your profile has over ***8000*** comments posted. A quick look shows that literally all of them adversarial. So….about having “others things to do with their time”…. ummmm….
February 6, 2017 at 11:40 am
The problem is that they could spent that $40 million on two seasons of a new show instead and take more of a punt on it being a massive hit.
That’s illogical to many people, and I think CBS are underestimating the value of having every single episode and movie of STAR TREK ever in HD, especially when they already have half of the franchise done. However, I can also see their point that whilst they would make the money back, it might take 10-20 years, which is not enough for executives who are usually in post only for five years or so.
February 5, 2017 at 12:22 am
While I think that Voyager stunk to high heaven (it was creatively bankrupt series that spent it’s run repeating stories that TNG and DS9 had already covered -but somehow doing them much worse) it still deserves a upgrade to HD. Yes, I understand it’s expensive and time consuming, but while TNG remains “popular”, it has aged horribly. I find the episode still good, but I’m okay with not watching them or owning the seasons on DVD. While there was some weakness with DS9 -especially in the first two seasons- a good 80% of episodes remain relevant today (the whole Dominion Arc is still significant and highly prescient as it was nearly 20 years ago). The fact that the show was so different from TNG and TOS, that it did take risks, that the writers and producers allowed Star Trek to have emotions; that it showed power corrupts not only the metaphor like aliens, but humans as well, is what makes it so much better than TNG. DS9 is the jewel in the crown of Star Trek, The fact that it remains the red-headed stepchild speaks volumes.
February 9, 2017 at 10:41 am
Couldn’t have said it better myself! TNG will always have a special place in my heart, quite simply because it was the Trek show I grew up watching.
But DS9 was in a whole different ballpark..it’s a shame that cast never got their own feature film and the whole show is pretty much forgotten nowadays among non-trekkies.
BarryDennen12
February 5, 2017 at 1:35 am
Can’t someone get into the ear of a famous nerd who can write a cheque and get this thing funded overnight? Surely Zuckerberg likes DS9 and Voyager – if not him, someone else
Rocky Robinson
February 5, 2017 at 2:39 am
Boy would love to see both series treated to an HD mastering. I work as a video editor, and engineer (just a local cable tv studio) but I understand the costs and effort involved in just re-digitizing the source film, not to mention the insanity involved to rework the digital effects. But that said, would still love to see it done. Just going to take forever for the economics of it all to work. Maybe they can crowd source 3D animation schools to put them together? Just dreaming.
Lance L Landon
February 5, 2017 at 3:37 am
Some improvement of the video only Star Trek episodes may have to wait a bit longer for more advanced computer technology to catch up with our desires. In the days of NTSC there were line doublers and triplers and such a computer technique might help to improve the NTSC video quality. Further, Enlarging the image to a much larger one than actually required with the application of an image focusing program might help; only later to be reduced to the pixel requirement for the number of pixels required for TV at that time. Later on, computers may be able to imagine with the aid of still shots just what an improved image should look like in a one frame at a time improvement. The application of genetic algorithms to improve those computer program applications should improve the image quality considerably. Finally as quantum computers will become available that we can really enhance a low resolution blurry image. Also some pan and scan will be necessary to fit the action in with the wider screen format.
February 5, 2017 at 4:56 am
The choose the perfect photo for his article. Sisko looks like “are you f****** kiddin me?
John Harrison
February 5, 2017 at 11:16 am
This explains why the interlacing artifacts on the special effects shots are so noticeable on the digital versions of DS9.
February 5, 2017 at 11:37 am
So…. CBS, like all studios, will literally burn through millions of dollars every year during pilot season…. green-lighting garbage TV shows that are cancelled half a season in.
Meanwhile, you have actual perpetual market demand for an existing series in their catalogue… that there is endless conversation on a desire to see brought up to modern television standards… which would *completely* re-invigorate that asset…. but there is no move to have it done?
They have a guaranteed built-in paying audience for this product.
All these “technical challenges” mentioned in the article…. doesn’t sound like roadblocks… sounds like an exciting project for their team to document on in the future thru social media that generates excitement and dialogue and criticism.
And frankly, with DS9 specifically, it was a bit ahead of its time in storytelling and casting.
The sad truth is, I’ve had the absolute misfortune of meeting multiple ignorant people over the decades who were self-proclaimed Star Trek fans, but didn’t want to watch DS9 because of their choice of “demographic” for the series lead.
Now in 2017 and beyond, that casting is actually welcomed and encouraged; yet another reason to re-introduce the series.
DS9 was a show so popular, they broadcast the series finale on the gigantic Toronto Skydome arena screen. I don’t recall them doing that on the last episode of “Two and a Half Men”.
February 6, 2017 at 5:44 pm
That’s the CBS TV production arm. This would be CBS Home Entertainment. Different business orgs, different business concerns, different budget parameters. Not a huge expense for the TV production arm, but likely insanely beyond the financial means of the home entertainment side.
February 6, 2017 at 5:58 pm
Time for some corporate synergy…
July 15, 2017 at 11:26 pm
*BUZZ* Wrong!
Star Trek: TNG was the show which had its final episode broadcast at Skydome, not DS9 : DS9 ‘s final episode was broadcast at the Scotiabank Theater, to a much reduced crowd of people.
February 5, 2017 at 8:49 pm
Surely there’s PAL version prints from the UK, Australia etc, which would at least give a little better resolution than NTSC?
February 6, 2017 at 11:43 am
No. The PAL prints were taken from the NTSC master tapes, so they actually look worse than watching the original shows on an NTSC TV. The image looks a lot “fuzzier” and softer than it does in the US, as it’s 525 lines stretched over 625.
Watching the HD remaster of the TNG was a massive revelation for UK audiences, even more than US ones. We were kind of used to watching the original show (and most American shows from the 1960s through the early 2000s) through a vague haze and suddenly seeing everything ultra-sharp was amazing.
February 6, 2017 at 5:45 pm
True. S1 and 2 particularly looked dark and soft in PAL, while there’s little difference between them and the rest of the series in remastered HD.
Nick Dickens
April 10, 2017 at 3:29 am
That is true. Watching the TNG in HD on Blu-ray for myself was like watching TOS remastered for the first time.
WOW! WTF! WOW!
Pedro Ferreira
February 6, 2017 at 2:10 pm
Yeah, nothing new here. The only glimmer of hope is the fact that CBS will one day have to upgrade all their shows to HD to make them attractive to digital streamers. I don’t think it’s a question of if but more of when.
February 6, 2017 at 2:16 pm
Physical media sales of TV series aren’t really enough to justify the the work needed to prepare even the simplest shows For HD distribution. SD shows have less and less syndication value. Content owners who want to monetize their SD programs will eventually produce HD versions. HD channels have time to fill & want to fill it with HD content. Another new pressure is iTunes — They are VERY strict about the quality of the videos they will accept. This drives the market in a new way. Previously it was up to the producers to decide when home video was good enough. Physical media, digital distribution & syndication are linked.
And then there is 4k… 16 & 35 mm film both contain enough information for 4k, but it’s expensive. Color grading for HDR, All FX & titles need to be recreated & Etc. On top of all that, the digital file needs to be prepared for dozens of digital formats.
So, do studios create HD versions that are already losing some value or 4k versions that most people can’t fully appreciate yet?
February 10, 2017 at 2:00 am
Since a lot of 4k material is merely upscaled and adjusted…while some fans would throw a fit, 2k scans seem just fine.
If people want it in 4k later, just upscale and “pop” the colors/”crispness” into HDR artificially like many 4k Blu-rays do.
February 10, 2017 at 12:41 pm
That’s exactly what people said about HD. Anything you do to the source material to upscale it or add color information distorts it. Think of each movie frame as a grid of dots with a range of information encoded in each dot. To make the image larger, you have to spread those dots apart and then fill in the gaps with new estimated dots. The guesses are pretty fancy, but in the end it comes down to balancing blurriness against blockiness. (see: nearest neighbor, bicubic interpolation & etc.) To improve the colors/contrast of each dot you have to map the old ranges to the new ones — more guessing.
Without many exceptions, UHD material is derived from UHD, 4k or film that was mastered at UHD or 4k. It has to be, there really isn’t a way to make 2(ish) megapixels look like 8(ish).
That said, most of the content I watch on my UHD, HDR TV is only HD or even SD. My PS4, AppleTV and Cable box all get upscaled by my TV. It doesn’t look like UHD, but it’s not bad. I’ve pretty much stopped buying movies/TV that aren’t UHD. For new shows, I always opt for the UHD version if it’s available.
In the end, that’s what kills off a format, people drift away as something better comes along.
February 10, 2017 at 12:58 pm
Without many exceptions? I find that claim to be curious given that numerous films finished in 2k have been released in 4k HDR last I heard. In my experience, home media enthusiasts keep complaining about it. So I’m uncertain what’s going on here as I have little experience of the format and can only listen to what the (often self-proclaimed, so who knows…) “experts” tell me is going on with it.
But they keep going on about how many films are just 2k manipulated.
February 10, 2017 at 6:31 pm
It’s true that many films are edited or even shot 2k. Two of the Star Wars prequels were shot/edited at only 1080p. There is some benefit to remastering 2k/HD digital cinema in UHD. 1) there is usually a tiny bit of resolution that’s is lost when going from 2k to HD 2) The colorspace of digital cinema is easier to represent in UHD. 3)Some compression artifacts in the HD files aren’t in the UHD files. But I agree, selling those programs as true 4K is dishonest. In those cases the best possible picture would result from a close to 1:1 transfer. However, your TV would still upscale, so maybe not. My experience isn’t with every production company — and mostly for new content. What I can say is that UHD/4K is taken very seriously. Some films will never be sold as UHD because the source material is 2K and the companies involved are honest.
FWIW, Digital Cinema was originally a bit of a con. “Digital” often means slightly worse-ish. They way it was explained to me is: 2K files have roughly the detail as the dupes that were shown at second run theaters. If you sit too close to the screen you can see the pixels — the way you could see the grain of the old dupes. 2K digital cinema does have excellent color, sound and an overall consistent quality. So the experience is better than a second run theater used to be — but not as good as a 35mm print CAN be. To be fair, 2K digital cinema was originally developed during a period where single large movie screens were being replaced by several smaller ones in many theaters. 2K digital cinema also allowed movies to be shown in emerging markets.
4K or greater digital cinema, which is becoming more common, is pretty close to the best first run movie experience you can have. Excellent color, resolution and sound. Most seats are far enough away that you can’t see the pixels and the compression is extremely light. Still, with all the new technology available, it’s kind of cool that film still records more visual information than just about any other format. It’s also MUCH more forgiving when you push the resolution.
February 10, 2017 at 7:08 pm
Okay. Thank you for the clarification. So there is some truth to all of it but I misconstrued it a bit by applying it so broadly? So, moving forward, most (modern) films without major budget concerns that are released on the format (from “honest” companies) will likely have true 4k Blu-ray releases? If so, that’s good to hear.
Otherwise, I can see the concern regarding upscaling…although I hear that 4k scans are becoming more affordable (and 2k scans have become reasonable in terms of price). Is that about right? At that rate, maybe this is all doable regardless.
I would just prefer 2k over nothing (obviously).
February 10, 2017 at 7:32 pm
That’s probably about right. Although I’ll bet 4k streaming (with all its compression & bandwidth issues) will be the primary distribution method.
You brought up a good point though. The term “remastered for 4k” is pretty vague & can hide some important details. If a company sells a movie shot in 2k as 4K/UHD, they aren’t being completely honest. A quick check of IMDB revealed 5 or 6 movies that are probably doing this. There are certainly more — which is disappointing. That said, many companies really are trying to produce high quality 4k/UHD.
February 10, 2017 at 8:41 pm
FWIW, I doubt that we’ll see UHD versions of these shows soon. As I wrote earlier, home media demand isn’t enough to cover that cost — it already doesn’t really cover the cost of HD. It will only happen if syndication outlets & streaming services start paying much less for HD & much more for UHD. That isn’t happening any time soon.
April 10, 2017 at 3:28 am
I think theHD versions will do OK in a UHD world due to their ‘archival nature’ I doubt that anything SD will be viable on any TV channel in 10 years.
Simply because people will be used to a sharp, detailed, vibrant image, and not some muddy, washed out, blurry mess.
February 7, 2017 at 3:19 am
Please correct me If I am wrong as far as I know most tv series shot in 90’s have this very problem that they don’t have master negatives. The X-Files was one of them too but hd version was released. Thanks
February 7, 2017 at 12:22 pm
I’m pretty sure that the X-files was shot on film. It was probably edited SD, but the negatives provide way more than enough detail for HD. X-files also had relatively few SFX shots that needed reworking for HD. I’m sure that all of the titles had to be reworked.
There are definitely some shows that were shot on tape. Those cannot be “remastered” for true HD or 4k. They can only be upscaled. The picture improves a bit. Here’s the boring reason…
Production formats like Bets-SP & later digi-beta had up to 360 lines of resolution (think of a 640x480i digital video). Compared to VHS with 250(ish) lines of resolution (think of a file thats somewhere between 320x240i and 640x480i). In both cases the 640 number is “stretched from around 500 and the 480i (i means interlaced) number is made from alternating between “half images”. It’s a mess. Anyway, DVD can hold more “spatial” information than was present on the original tape. Up to 720x576i for widescreen. The format has a lot of compression that can change colors and introduce artifacts that aren’t on the analog tape. So… a less compressed HD or UHD file (downloaded, streamed or on a disc) with less compression (an maybe a better colorspace) will reveal details that DVDs cannot. Not many details… but some.
As with anything digital/analog there is plenty of room to argue over specific numbers (540, 720…) and “perception”, but that chunk of text above gives a pretty good overview of what’s going on.
February 7, 2017 at 12:25 pm
My comment was deleted. Why?
February 8, 2017 at 10:25 am
Wait a minute. “ENTERPRISE” got re-mastered and not “DEEP SPACE NINE” and “VOYAGER”? Something is rotten in Denmark . . . like the stench of bigotry.
February 9, 2017 at 1:17 pm
Enterprise was shot and broadcast in HD. Thus making it a very simple process. DS9 & Voyager would take years to upgrade. Sad but true.
April 10, 2017 at 3:22 am
Enterprise was ‘future proofed’ seasons 1-3 were shot on film. Season 4 shot on Digital.
The VFX were all shot in HD so the entire show from start to finish was always HD.
August 16, 2022 at 2:11 pm
Little side note about Enterprise and its HD status; here in Canada, it was the first show to be broadcast in HD.
Brandon Coppin
February 9, 2017 at 6:27 pm
Having to recomposite and rescan the entire series is daunting. However, CGI is not nearly as expensive and difficult as it used to be. I worked in CGI at microsoft and a lot has changed. recreating the cgi in DS9 and Voyager would not be as time-consuming and difficult as we are being led to believe. If these shows don’t get the HD treatment they will fade away completely as they are already almost unwatchable on a 4K screen. Pixel density will only increase in the future and these older shows will be lost. I’m surprised that CBS does not want to protect their investment – especially considering the staying power of Star Trek.
April 10, 2017 at 3:21 am
Sadly I think CBS won’t realise that until it’s too late. When there is no content to show.
As I believe JMS said TV execs are having kittens as basically 95% and 100% of their back catalogue is now unviable in the HD and more accurately UHD 4K at minimum world we live in.
Doug Kinzinger
February 10, 2017 at 3:32 pm
Nice article. If only we could get VFX assets all lined up in advance…
February 10, 2017 at 7:03 pm
OK, so as everyone begins to appreciate the importance of actually putting your money where your mouth is to support the content you love, here’s a DS9-related effort you all should support with your actual money:
“What We Left Behind” DS9 Documentary by Ira Stephen Behr Indiegogo Campaign: https://igg.me/at/DS9Doc/x/16052523
Darren Kent
February 14, 2017 at 1:38 am
There is no doubt that what described above is a major accomplishment, and kudos to all those involved in this amazing effort – but I would draw the line at the describing TNG and The Twilight Zone as the “two greatest television releases of the home video era”.
The greatest television release of the home video era is classic era Doctor Who. Not only were 36 years of television released – as single stories – they were all restored, many from 16mm film telesync copies, the soundtracks restored, to a digital quality that belies the slap-dash archiving of the show – with a budget that was minute compared to that described above.
EVERY released story has original cast and crew commentary. 99% of the stories have a brand new “making of” documentary to accompany the story. Every story has an information track describing production of the story presented. Where stories had missing episodes, the episodes were either replaced with specially commissioned animation matched to the original soundtracks, or at their very least, recreated using available tele snaps taken at the time, combined with publicity photos and the original soundtracks.
Not only was the above maintained across every release, but the “Restoration Team” responsible created bleeding edge restoration techniques – such as Reverse Standards Conversion, recreating PAL video from NTSC videotape, and Chroma Dot Recovery, recovering colour information from black and white filmed copies – to recreate the episodes to as close to their original broadcast quality.
The TNG blurays are an accomplishment – but they pale in comparison to the Doctor Who DVD range.
April 10, 2017 at 3:19 am
I thought the exact same thing. Heck they even recreated from scratch an entire serial from 1966 in HD in native B&W and in colour just last year.
February 14, 2017 at 6:36 pm
Thanks for this article – very interesting on several fronts. As a trek fan, and as a fan of television shows of this era in general. I remember a few of the responses that JMS gave when fans pestered him about doing a Babylon 5 remaster and his answers were basically the cliff-notes version of this – that the technology and methods used at the time limited what could be done with it, that all the exterior CGI shots would have to be completely re-done, too expensive etc etc, but it’s a fascinating read to get more details about precisely what such a project entails.
I’ve had the TNG dvd sets for ages, but I might have to think about picking up those blu-ray sets and re-homing the dvds to a friend….
February 14, 2017 at 7:08 pm
There’s a saying in VFX: You can have quality, price and speed. Pick two. Basically if you’re in a rush, you’re either getting poor quality (Avengers 2, car chase sequence with Black Widow on a bike), or you’ll spend a lot. But we’re not in a rush for DS9. Serenity was done on a budget, and has terrific special effects. So what if it takes a year longer to do a season? That makes it more interesting for CBS All Access, if they can release episodes on a weekly basis.
February 17, 2017 at 10:24 pm
I absolutely LOVED DS9. It was by far my favorite out of the others… sad, but I doubt I’ll ever see Terok Nor in 2k-4K glory. I mean the article mentioned 2K scans, and 4k-5K is already here…
Douglas Hamner
February 19, 2017 at 4:04 am
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zzbocEbtEE However this proves otherwise
February 20, 2017 at 10:39 am
How about a DVD set that’s progressive instead of interlaced? Would that be possible? It’s the interlacing that bugs me the most (and the only reason I never bought DS9 on DVD).
February 21, 2017 at 11:00 pm
Why don’t they just put it on kickstarter and see what happens ??
They can do it for DS9 or Voyager and see where it goes…I’m sure if they handed over those originals to fans – the fans would do it themselves.
March 6, 2017 at 12:34 am
Who’s “they” ? CBS has no financial interest in this project. They will not devote any resources to a fruitless project. Best realistic shot is to have wealthy die hard DS9 fans (net worth in the millions – others not invited to the club) independently finance the costs by assuming all risks and taking in zero profit and no recognition rights (CBS takes all the credit). Then maybe that might work. Good luck with that.
March 1, 2017 at 10:07 am
This article suggests that the crowdfunded documentary on DS9, What We Left Behind, might have remastering clips for the documentary as one of the stretch goals. If you want to see the show get at least a taste of HD, then help get the documentary get to $500,000.
trekcore.com/blog/2017/03/documentary-team-seeks-star-trek-deep-space-nine-film-negatives-for-hd-film-clips/
March 4, 2017 at 11:13 am
Brian, thanks for speaking to Robert Meyer Burnett to explain the difficulties involved in bringing DS9 and Voyager to High Definition. It doesn’t mean we have to like it, though. He said it would be hard. That doesn’t mean the same as impossible. As Spock himself said frequently, “There are always possibilities.”
March 4, 2017 at 8:27 pm
I got my set. And it does make a difference- I bought the TOS blu ray, but I also bought the Roddenberry Vault, and I’ve noticed things in some of those episodes that I didn’t notice in the set blu rays. This is much the same reason we don’t have Babylon 5 in blu ray- the CGI was not rendered at a sufficiently high resolution, and most of it appears to have been rendered at 4:3, so while the live action portions may be available in 16:9, there would be a sudden, jarring lowering of resolution and appearance of black bars. I notice that when I play Grand Theft Auto Online, the general play looks great on my monitor, but brief cutscenes, such as when I enter buildings, suddenly appears square, with large black bands on the sides. I’ve come to expect it, but it’s still jarring, and it would look terrible to suddenly see the screen shrink when you are looking at a space battle.
Daniel Blakeley
March 28, 2017 at 8:01 am
As a lesser alternative it’s a real pity they don’t look into upscaling, sharpening & colour enhancing the existing dvd footage for bluray release. They just gotta pay someone to run the DVD files through a good program lol.
This guy did it at home using some DS9 dvd footage (note the veins appearing on Siskos head): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_K2qjE3MUc
And as for official studios doing this I know of it being done with Farscape so no doubt there are others: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farscape#Blu-ray_release
April 1, 2017 at 2:40 pm
I’m thinking the Blu Ray sales were poor because the asking price was too high. IIRC, retail for the first season was $118? For a single season? I think you’d get a lot more fans to buy them if the season prices were more reasonable. Now that you can buy a box set (all seven seasons) for under $100, I went ahead and bought it, even though I had already “acquired” the episodes in HD. If the seasons were say, $40 each when they were first released, I probably would have bought them as they were released, and they would have made more money from me. By pricing it so high to start, they basically forced me to wait for the box set, and I picked it up at a considerable discount.
Peter D. Bander
April 3, 2017 at 10:32 pm
It might be difficult but it wasn’t that difficult to get the X-FILES complete series on blue ray witch the years it was on 1993 to 2001 the same time DS9 and Voyager.
April 10, 2017 at 3:11 am
The X-Files skewed to an older audience who may not be as into streaming and would prefer a ‘default’ physical format. Also as successful as DVD was, for X-Files fans many were in their late 20s and early 30s and with the recent revival they decided to buy some X-Files DVDs. They saw the Blu-rays and brought them.
Also Fox has a very proven history of reissuing and re-releasing popular franchises like the Alien and Star Wars films many times.
April 7, 2017 at 2:26 pm
As Spock would say, logical.
BeaveVillage
April 16, 2017 at 7:54 pm
Thanks for that! Perhaps one day we will see DS9 and VOY in an even better transfer than TNG. 🙂
April 20, 2017 at 6:54 pm
Great insight. Shame we will never get an HD version. Loved DS9 and Voyager but at least the reasons are logical not just that they did not want to spend money on an HD conversion because they were not as popular as TNG and TOS.
LAMasterJedi
April 21, 2017 at 8:45 pm
Great article..thank you so much for explaining and getting all the tech “talk” from Mr. Burnett was a treat for a star trek Uber fan. Would have loved to have seen Voyager and DS9 in HD. Can’t we assign a Borg Cube to assimilate and task them with this huge undertaking. 5,000 drones working collectively should be able to knock it out in no time.
Millard Fillmore
April 26, 2017 at 7:30 am
Great, great work here. Thank you!
May 6, 2017 at 11:04 pm
A visual effects artist and YouTuber has made some very impressive 1080 and 4K HD video renderings of the Voyager. Here’s his YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLt3KZ_wqOUUXx6WQ9ynZbtB6eo0nPG0Ho
May 10, 2017 at 4:15 am
As others have mentioned, I fail to understand how this is news. We have known for a long time that the costs were high. The irony is I was surprised to find out how cheap it was to reproduce TNG–I had assumed it was much higher than 12 million dollars. When we consider how this franchise has been milked for cable televison/etc for decades before streaming (and now through streaming and ad revenue there) 12 million seems like a drop in the bucket, especially for a cash-cow series like TNG. Sure, physical sales of the TNG HD remaster were “lacking”, but I think only because they had hoped their investment would double/triple their money in first few weeks after release. That is the missing explanation here. Yes, any form of new media (movies, TV, games) is a failure unless it doubles+ the money invested immediately after release, including remasters. The long game of sustaining sales for the future through quality content is somehow still a “fringe” idea for many corporations, why should CBS be any different. I am sure they would rather throw that money at a new show. Crowdfunding? Great idea, but I can’t see them going for it. Perhaps if the new series shakes things up a bit, and a new generation of viewers discovers the older star trek shows we might see them take another hard look at DS9 and Voyager, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.
June 23, 2017 at 8:59 pm
At least they should offer us Upscale versions on BluRay and replace the old SD streaming to new ones. Not every Bluray re-release is perfect job like TNG, some have no choice or budged but to upscale: Take the original tapes as it is, scan to PC, than fix/enhance everything that is possible and upscale to FHD resolution. Its not best looking but still much better than original DVD. I think X-Files bluray was upscaled, still better than DVD
Everything below 720p and DVD especially looks unwatchable on modern 4K TV. There are no more FHD TVs sold by big brands, anyone going out to buy a new TV will come home with 4K set either he wants it or not (Unless he chooses to buy Chinese Walmart garbage models or second hand), even Vizio moved to all 4K.
Basically if people could live with watching DVDs on FHD TV, now watching DVD on 4K TV is impossible.
July 1, 2017 at 8:27 pm
CBS should do a Crowd Funding Round on Indigogo or Kickstarter! If fans raise at least 4,000,000 in pre-sales, then CBS should commit! Or 5-million, or whatever is needed. Give us the democratic chance to make these come back alive! Also, King Abdullah the II of Jordan is a huge Trekker, and he was even featured in an episode of Star Trek Voyager as a Birthday present from his family! Trek was his life till he was 30 years old. A petition should be launched for Trekkers to sign asking King Abdullah II of Jordan to contribute 1-million dollars for this! He is in Voyager after all! Or at least he could through in $100,000 dollars. He has tens of millions of dollars, and he build the Worlds First and Only Star Trek WATER PARK which is in Jordan! We need these restored onto 4K immediately, or at least on 1080p. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kmut6FJ1d4M
August 16, 2022 at 9:53 am
Boy, being deluded is all that you can be huh?
Jefffffffff
July 2, 2017 at 10:12 am
My DS9 and Voyager dvd sets are unwatchable on my big screen television. So grainy and faded by today’s standards I can no longer sit through an entire episode.
July 9, 2017 at 3:08 pm
Classical case of technical debt.
Chris Groves
July 15, 2017 at 9:27 am
When you hear and read about this gargantuan task to rebuild a massive juggernaut of a show like The Next Generation for HD…..it is hard to imagine how any studio has any excuse when it comes to doing top-of-the-line restorations(not necessarily rebuilds with new effects) of certain films.
The notion of single films or groups of films being ‘cost prohibitive’ to restore, when CBS essentially performed the full post-production process on 178 episodes of The Next Generation…is ridiculous.
July 19, 2017 at 9:46 pm
If they bother to remaster Voyager and DS9, they should aim for at least 8K resolution masters. To at least future proof both shows decades from now. I think in the coming years more people will be switching to 4K which will become standard.
August 16, 2017 at 10:52 am
I never found myself enjoying DS9 or Voyager enough to convince me to buy these on DVD, let alone any interest in BluRays. I have my BluRay TOS, TNG and Enterprise, along with my semi-disappointing BluRay movie collections to keep me content.
I don’t think this would have all been as big a problem if CBS had originally been realistic in its price points for its Star Trek physical media sets. Casting the VHS matter aside, let’s look at at DVDs for a moment (because discs were always supposed to be cheaper to produce and sell than cassettes).
Any single season of any Trek series retailed on DVD in the $50-60 range, and those prices never really changed, even over the course of a decade or more of availability. Few TV series being produced today (let alone a show that could be 20 yeas old) had the audacity to be priced anywhere near that high, most coming down to less than half that price after a short time. And we’re talking pre-restoration here. $350 minimum to purchase the complete series.
Then after fans shelled out for this, just a few years later out rolls the 25th anniversary box set. Hey! There’s another $300 to put out for new packaging and some bonus features.
Then comes those BluRay releases, which saw the work begin almost immediately as the DVD box set was released. $80-90 per season, so another $500-600 to own this show yet again.
Do we begin to understand here? Add all that up for a moment and see what fans have paid just for The Next Generation here. Had CBS not raped the fans with excessively inflated prices, and somehow allowed or made possible such passable bootlegs to flood the market at a third of their price, CBS would have seen better profits with more legitimate purchases from its fans in the first place, not disappointed by its lackluster sales.
Blame declining physical media sales in favor of streaming all you like, but that’s not really the issue. We all know that with the creation of CBS All Access, CBS will end all licensing with other services and the only place a person will be able to stream any Trek in the near future is on their own site. No more Netflix, at least domestically.
That’s okay. I have zero interest in Discovery. I wouldn’t watch it if it were free and in my hand now. And since I don’t stream and have no home internet service, it’s not something I ever have to worry about.
September 3, 2017 at 1:02 am
It makes me wish Netflix owned the rights to Star Trek instead of CBS. They’d see the opportunity to redo the series like TOS and release it as a streaming series that would be a brand new series to most people who have Netflix. They pay big bucks for great series and DS9 had great writing and great acting.
September 5, 2017 at 1:15 pm
Suggestion #1: Bring in volunteers who can credit at the end of the each remaster episodes. Buy pizza and cola. Suggestion #2: Go to Star Trek convention, recruit folks with talents. I am a nerd with decent video edit skills. Or comb both. I got 3 jobs and I am willing to contribute my time/money to remaster projects. also comb crowd funding. Star Trek given me so much, it is time for me to return the favor.
September 10, 2017 at 6:36 am
At least I now know why. I wonder if any of those internet billionaires are Trek fans? who would be prepaired to stump up the $50 million? We could crowd fund, but I have no idea how much that would make. No where near $50 million would be my guess.
September 22, 2017 at 10:39 am
Just because it’s hard does NOT mean it’s impossible! Plus, the fan bases of both shows are still there, and they’re growing. As Spock correctly pointed out, “The Needs of the Many outweigh the Needs of the Few, or the One.”
Señor Pérez
September 24, 2017 at 12:18 pm
Thank you for posting this. It was very interesting. I hope they get to remaster Voyager, which I have just started to watch on Netflix.
September 26, 2017 at 12:59 am
I learned that Discovery’s budget was $8-8.5 million per episode or $125 million (give or take, possibly more…I’m not sure if that figure includes actor salaries, I doubt it) for the 15 episode 1st season. IMHO, money much better spent on remastering both DS9 (176 episodes) and Voyager (172 episodes).
October 10, 2017 at 12:54 am
The mid-80s Twilight Zone revival was shot on VHS not 35mm. I’m soo disapointed you did not know that
October 17, 2017 at 10:01 pm
How ironic. In the Trek universe, none of this would be an issue. We’d just be doing it because we loved it.
October 18, 2017 at 4:59 am
and for all of this, on CBS all access, TNG is in 640×480 and in low res.
December 7, 2017 at 1:28 pm
I finally started to make my bluray collection of old glories, which for years I postponed (fortunately, I might add) and I wanted to buy this TNG boxset but found it very expensive. After reading this, I feel so damn cheap for waiting for a sale…I wish all of this information was public before it went to the stores, because it would have made it a better success, I believe, considering most people would never have known these facts if this interview never took place. I came here to find out when Voy/DS9 would get remastered in bluray, and I go away with sadness in my heart.
Thanks so much for this interview, and thanks to Robert and all the others involved in the various ST (re)releases for their hard work. Star Trek is part of our history and our future, and needs to be treated like any other important parts of our history that’s taken care of in the museums.
Andrew Geczy
December 23, 2017 at 1:35 pm
Maaaaaaan, that’s super sad that disc sales were so negatively impacted by streaming. Really sucks. If only they’d released near the beginning ot the Blu-Ray craze, before streaming gained popularity. WHen I first bought my PS3, I’d have absolutely bought star trek remasters.
Whatever910
January 9, 2018 at 4:53 am
Capitalism strikes again, if it ain’t profitable, it doesn’t get done… Quite ironic when it comes to the currencyless and tradeless world of Trek. Don’t start nitpicking, yes, the federations trades with other extra-federation entities, but inside it, even between the civilizations comprising the federation, currency and trades aren’t used for the most part, they’re recognized as they are in a services abundant context ( such as ours shockingly, but we don’t recognize it ), that is, useless and thoroughly inefficient as well as deeply counter-productive. Much less between individuals and inner Federation groups and there’s no “barter” either.
January 9, 2018 at 1:51 pm
I purchased Enterprise this year, for Christmas to me, from me. It is FANTASTIC!!! After Watching Discoverys 10th episode about the mirror universe, I started with Enterprise’s “In a Mirror Darkly”, and it looked SOO GOOD!!! I don’t like TNG well enough to spend the dough for it, but I can’t wait for Voyager to come out.
Are there no super rich nerds out there willing to put up the $40 million for the benefit of mankind? Bill Gates? Paul Allen? The Space Man himself Elon Musk? No Trekkies among them?
Also, although disc sales are down, are not online streaming sales up on services such as Vudu or iTunes?
So we just need to get someone to raise or donate 20 million, and we can have Voyager blu ray restorations? Someone set up the indiegogo.
If you made this a world wide Patreon effort to pay for this I will bet you the fans would give you the money. In fact you could have different price points of giving so the contributor gets a discount when finally released. I don’t agree with your reasoning because of how devoted the fans are for ANY of the series.
Unholy Impetuous Ritual Plague
Its too bad really, i would have loved to see DS9 in HD. Endgame from Voyager in true HD would be amazing.
Billy Beefcaked
Re-watching DS9 right now for the first time since the mid-2000’s when I watched it last on DVD.
I recommend you watch the show on an ipad or iphone (I’m watching it on my iphone 7), because the smaller screen makes the low resolution of the show not look that bad at all.
On the flip side of the coin though I picked up Star Trek TNG blu ray boxset, and I have begun watching that on my 4K 65 inch tv….AND IT LOOKS AMAZING!
It is a shame we will never see DS9 or Voyager in HD but at least we can still watch them in some form today.
ToxicKookie
Learned a lot reading this. Had no idea that much work went into TNG being remastered. Would still love DS9 to get the same treatment though.
The TNG Blu-ray sets were massively overpriced in the US, Canada, and the UK, which are Star Trek’s major markets. Amazon in the US was selling the sets for $70 pre release date. Amazon UK was selling them for £60 pre release. However, retailers in most countries in Europe and Scandinavia couldn’t sell them for anything above peanuts. I soon sussed this out, buying, a month after release, season 2 from Italy for £18, and seasons 5, 6 and 7 from Norway and Finland for £25 each, all brand new and shrink wrapped. Something was very very wrong with the retail pricing across the board.
Simon Jones
The TNG Blu-ray sets retailed for $70/£60 minimum in Trek’s major markets, the US, Canada, and the UK. Outside of these markets, retailers across Europe couldn’t sell them for free. I picked up Season 2 from Italy for £18 a month after release, and seasons 5, 6 and 7 from Norway for £25 each a couple of weeks after release. The retail pricing was a major problem.
Jeff Randall
The flip side is “how much has Paramount / CBS made on Star Trek over the last decades?” And if DS9 and Voyager remain SD how much will they make on those 2 in the future ? Nothing. The bottom line is they will make more than enough profit in the coming years but they don’t want to shell out because that income won’t come in fast enough for the pen pushers. And what halfwit sanctioned the move to video editing in the 80’s? Talk about false economy. Practically the entire output of US tv for over a decade will fade away into SD obscurity while the all film shows from the 70’s and earlier will live on. It’s incredible that anyone (even idiot executives) thought it a good idea to spend all that money on high quality 35mm shooting then throw it all away before it even reached the screen. The most short sighted decision made in US tv history
I don’t think streaming had much to do with the failure of TNG on Bluray. Anyone interested in collecting Trek on home video is not the same market as those who are happy with streaming. The problem with the Trek Blurays was that they were just too expensive. In a market riddled with reductions they should have released them initially in some kind of Limited Edition with exclusive features to make fans pay. Few will pay £60+ for a single season of tv but make it Limited and it would sell. Whether that would raise 20 million dollars is doubtful. The notion of crowd funding for this seems rather optimistic unless CBS open a campaign and make it run for an unlimited time until they get close to 20 million. It would take years
Live Long and Prosper
I really enjoyed DS9, but sadly I don’t believe there is project-able profit vs cost, but I would love DS9 in BR – I would watch it for the 5th or 6th time, but wouldn’t bother with just DVD
What’s missing here is an appreciation of the future.
Yeah, disc sales are declining. So? VHS sales are fucking abysmal. Time marches on. Now you’re selling your library of content to Netflix instead of Blockbuster — the business model has changed. So? DS9 and Voyager are much more valuable assets in HD than they are in SD. The cost of converting raw film into edited, with-effects HD video is getting cheaper by the day. At some point the guns and butter lines will cross, and it’ll make sense to create HD DS9 and Voyager. They preserve every single original negative of both shows in an abandoned salt mine, for Christ’s sake, it’s a matter of when, not if.
Neil Wilkes
This is sophistry – Voyager is on Netflix in HD, so why not on Blu-ray?
Enigmaticus
Since, October of this year, I have purchased the entirety of Star Trek: The Original Series on BluRay and the entirety of Star Trek: The Next Generation on BluRay, including each of the two part series on BluRay and each individual season separately on BluRay. I have also purchased the entirety of Star Trek: Voyager on DVD and have purchased two additional copies of the entire series of Star Trek: Voyager as belated holiday gifts. Do you think that the poll which had been conducted in December of 2012 which had indicated that 48% of 10,000 fans surveyed had indicated that Star Trek: Voyager should be the next series released on BluRay had been paid attention to? No, Rather unfortunately, they had released the abominable Star Trek: Entrerprise series on BluRay instead, even though only 10% of the fans had voted for it. My suggestion had been to test the waters by releasing each of the Q episodes from Star Trek: Voyager on BluRay: ‘Death Wish,’ ‘The Q and The Grey’ and ‘Q2.’ Do you think that if those releases are successful, then CBS and Paramount would release the entirety of Star Trek: Voyager on BluRay in about a year?
Jeremiah Tothenations
The main thing that stopped me buying HD TNG was the lack of wide-screen. I know it would’ve been too costly, but it’s omission feels like a half job and a major missed opportunity. If you’re going to go to all that trouble, at least do it properly.
The other reasons are political/ethical/personal, but I’ll leave that discussion for another time.
I’ll stick with my original dvds thanks.
Since, October of last year, I have purchased the entirety of Star Trek: The Original Series on BluRay and the entirety of Star Trek: The Next Generation on BluRay, including each of the two part series on BluRay and each individual season separately on BluRay. I have also purchased the entirety of Star Trek: Voyager on DVD and have purchased two additional copies of the entire series of Star Trek: Voyager as belated holiday gifts. Do you think that the poll which had been conducted in December of 2012 which had indicated that 48% of 10,000 fans surveyed had indicated that Star Trek: Voyager should be the next series released on BluRay had been paid attention to? No, Rather unfortunately, they had released the abominable Star Trek: Enterprise series on BluRay instead, even though only 10% of the fans had voted for it. My suggestion had been to test the waters by releasing each of the Q episodes from Star Trek: Voyager on BluRay: ‘Death Wish,’ ‘The Q and The Grey’ and ‘Q2.’ Do you think that if those releases are successful, then CBS and Paramount would release the entirety of Star Trek: Voyager on BluRay in about a year? However, a tremendous opportunity to release Star Trek: Voyager arrives next year. Yes, in 2020- Star Trek: Voyager will celebrate it’s 25th anniversary. So maybe that will change their minds about releasing Star Trek: Voyager on BluRay at that time.
Well, what do you think?
Electronic Maestro
You could collect the money from the fans, by donations. If all fans, who want’s to see Voyager and DS9 in FHD, give a dollar, or five, or ten, I think that there will be enough money collected to do the job. Later, when all episodes are converted, they can give those episodes to those fans for free or as much episodes as they payd for it, and the rest of us will buy the discs. That’s only my oppinion. Sorry for my poor english, I’m from Croatia. [email protected]
To bad Voyager is still my favorite Star Trek it was entertaining all the way thro, TNG was so mutch up and down in quality
$20 million is a spit in the bucket these days for the industry (even a CRAP film gets that kind of budget and they usually TANK) so excuse me if it all sounds like a load of crap. You can BUY shows on places like iTunes and cut out of the costs of discs (they could even include upgraded Atmos sound now or at least the full 7.1 instead of 5.1 that typically shows up). The CGI elements make it EASIER to redo the graphics if they still exist (just rerender) which would cut costs by a TON (no way would it cost $20 million using those, more like $5 million).
What a bunch of CHEAPSKATES at Paramount! Call Bill Gates up for god’s sake. Tell me he’s not a closet Trekkie. It’d be pocket change for him and secure a lot of jobs for a few years!
August 22, 2019 at 8:30 pm
Can’t they just release the existing footage on Blueray with significantly better digital encoding/bitrate and call it a day? (assuming they have the source tapes still)
That alone should drastically improve visual fidelity. In addition they could play back the source tapes on a higher quality tape player when converting to digital…
They don’t need to remaster anything, just do a better conversion from analog to digital.
February 20, 2021 at 9:30 pm
Star Trek The Next Generation hasn’t ever been remastered in HD.
April 21, 2021 at 1:16 pm
Voyager, in particular, is very soft, blurry, and lofi-looking, and its dynamic range (contrast capability) seems extremely limited and washed out. It’s shocking how bad that series looks now even compared to DS9. Odd that they cut corners there but spent so much money and effort elsewhere. The Japanese had hidef analog screens at the time. The producers really should have tailored the show for something like that. I also think much of their creature effects could have been done with puppetry and animatronics, especially considering how relatively low budget movies have done very well with that during that era or before, and there are plenty of people who had experience and needed jobs doing that. CGI still doesn’t look great, looked even worse then, and is rarely as cheap as people believe.
January 24, 2022 at 2:04 am
Aside from final compositing job and effects I bet studios could get volunteers from all over the world to remodel all the ships in the voyager series for free in high resolution and detail. The modelers might just request they get a free copy of the series when its released in HD in exchange for their hard work. I wouldn’t underestimate the enthusiasm of fans and very talented 3d artists out in the public willing to work for free just to be a part of Star Trek. That would save studio lots of money.
June 16, 2024 at 1:26 pm
Fascinating, if a bit longwinded, article. I still think it’s possible to do a proper, professional upscaling (at least)…they’re just being lazy, IMHO. It was said years ago that DS9 is the one in the worst shape and which really needs some kind of restoration. I have to point out that out there is a fan-upscaled enhancement of the entire DS9 series from the DVD releases…and I have to say that it looks pretty darned good to my eyes. I also have several Voyager episodes (from the DVD releases) which I’ve recorded onto Blu-ray discs (and using a slight basic upscaling)…and those look really darned good too. So I simply can’t believe that CBS is so damn lazy they simply don’t want to bother with DS9 or Voyager…they just don’t want to spend the time or money to at least try and professional upscaling.
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The Kelvin films — "Star Trek (2009)‚" "Star Trek Into Darkness," and "Star Trek Beyond" — were already available in 4K. There is hope for DS9, Voyager in HD Play
Watch on. As with Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager is unlikely to ever get an official high-resolution remaster. The effects were shot on video rather than added to film after the fact, making ...
If you've seen the 2018 documentary What We Left Behind about Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, then you may remember that for the occasion the filmmakers remastered a single scene into high definition.Probably the most epic space battle in the history of the franchise — the combined Starfleet and Klingon fleets fighting their way through that of the Dominion in season 6's "Sacrifice of ...
Fans of classic Star Trek series Star Trek Voyager may be in luck then. Star Trek fan Billy Reichard has kicked off a project to get the 90s era show remastered in 4K, using an AI machine learning ...
A little over two years ago, I launched a personal and completely unofficial effort to restore Star Trek: Deep Space Nine based on the original DVD source, using then-new software like Topaz Video ...
Star Trek: Voyager and Deep Space Nine are stuck in a standard definition past. But fans are finding ways to give certain scenes an HD face lift.
455 Films previously produced Star Trek documentaries For the Love of Spock, Chaos on the Bridge, and What We Left Behind.The studio intended to celebrate Voyager's 25th anniversary with the ...
remastering and restoring Star Trek will be an expensive project for Paramount/CBS. They only have to do Star Trek I, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, IX and X in 4K. And Voyager and Deep Space Nine for 2k.
Now, it looks like Star Trek: Voyager might get the same HD treatment! With ten days left, the Indiegogo for the new Voyager documentary by the same folks at 455 Films is already hundreds of thousands of dollars above their DS9 predecessor's campaign. In fact, they're nearing a MILLION DOLLARS (which will set a new record for crowd-funding ...
Watch the iconic intro of Star Trek: Voyager, remastered to Full-HD by ScifiNewsDE and relive the journey of a lifetime! This video marks the beginning of th...
The best of all the title sequences, now in HD. This is a re-creation from scratch, including building the ship. I started this in 2017. It has been a long p...
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Share. rextraverse. • 2 yr. ago. It's not HD or remastered. However, if you're comparing it to TNG SD - especially the earlier seasons - Voyager's main sets benefit from much better design and lighting for photography than TNG's main sets. Even with TNG, you can tell that the ship sets got dramatically brighter and better lit around Season 3 ...
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The What We Left Behind DS9 documentary contains remastered HD footage from DS9 created for the documentary. It looks amazing. Sucks that we'll probably never get DS9 fully remastered as it's my favorite star trek series.
If 300,000 people will commit to a 1-year subscription to CBS All Access, it should recoup the total cost of an HD Remasters of both Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager. The HD remaster of Star Trek: The Next Generation is beautiful, better than anyone thought possible. But it was an expensive project and did not recoup its costs. This is because the full quality, 1080p version was only release