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Comment by ocdtrekkie | Hacker News Reader

I kinda hope that perhaps, if CBS doesn't find value in doing a TNG-level remaster of DS9 and Voyager, that something like this might give them a "good enough" version for a Blu-ray release. At the very least, one could imagine using this technique where applicable to at least, massively cut down the conversion cost in scenarios where re-cutting the scene would be particularly cost prohibitive.

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I do wonder if having DS9 and Voyager available on so many streaming platforms right now cuts down on the incentive to remaster them. I'm not sure if a remaster would be enough of a draw to CBS All Access if you can already watch all the episodes on the other major streaming services, but perhaps Star Trek Discovery is successful enough they might consider it?

On the contrary, I'd think that a remaster would give them a reason to charge all those streaming services more for the shows. No reason to hold exclusivity over a twenty year old show.

I think that changing the price is sensitive, but having better quality content would entice people to watch it (reducing pressure on producing new more costly content)

I don’t think it’s fair to call ST: Discovery a part of the franchise at this point.

It’s this bizarre smodge of minority group agendas, dark horror-like scenes and modern political ideas disguised as the family friendly Star Trek that you could watch with your kids that we all actually loved.

And are the plot lines intelligent? Do they make you think about interesting (non overdone ie non-left) philosophical issues? Not really, and they’re strung along in an awkward and long story arc that’s pretty dull and predictable and takes away from the per-episode storytelling :/

> modern political ideas

> family friendly Star Trek

Star Trek has always been preachy. Did you forget about the TOS episodes with the half-black-half-white and half-white-half-black guys who hated each other?

> It’s this bizarre smodge of minority group agendas, dark horror-like scenes and modern political ideas disguised as the family friendly Star Trek that you could watch with your kids that we all actually loved.

Uh, every Star Trek series was, in its time, a “bizarre smodge of minority group agendas, dark horror-like scenes and modern political ideas disguised as” something else (“Wagon Train to the stars”, in the case of TOS.) It seems tamer retrospectively because it's usually been on the side that became the accepted standard on the issues, and because the presentation of horror evolves.

OTOH, the pervasive long story-arc thing hasn't been constant throughout Trek, but it's been a growing trend within Trek since at least DS9 (and also, within adult TV generally; static-background episodic fare outside of children’s shows seems to have been progressively going out of fashion for decades.)

> minority group agendas, [...] and modern political ideas

could you refer me to an analysis that elaborates on this claim?

I distinctly recall every flavor of "it's not real Star Trek" when Enterprise came out, and people still whine about the story choices in Voyager today. Heck, some people who were fans of the original series would be loathe to call TNG "real Star Trek". In fact, having people who complain it isn't real Star Trek might be the best proof that Discovery is, in fact, real Star Trek. ;)

Star Trek has always been incredibly progressive/left-leaning. The Federation is a communist utopia where everyone has everything they could ever want for free. If you talk to people on the original series, plenty of them will talk about things that they wanted to do, in terms of gay characters and the like, but that they couldn't get permission to actually air. But they have always pushed the envelope of being about as far left as they can get away with from a business side perspective.

Yeah... this is a series that had the first interracial kiss, a black woman professional during a time when black women could only be nannies and servants, and a Russian serving openly amongst Americans during the Cold War.

I've seen a lot of complaints about "liberal" and "feminist" agendas being pushed in Discovery. It baffles me. Do such people not know what the Federation is about? They're literally social justice warriors in space.

The funny thing is that the concept of inclusivity has always been at the core of Star Trek, so if anything, Discovery is simply keeping with the status quo.

> I don’t think it’s fair to call ST: Discovery a part of the franchise at this point.

It is, because CBS says it is, and your opinion on the matter is not relevant[0].

It's canon. It's part of the franchise. It takes place in the same timeline as TOS. Accept it.

[0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ib83xJTbFEQ

As a fan I would be happy with a hybrid approach, where they use the original 35mm negatives where possible and upscale the VFX shots.

Honestly the worst part of the currently available DVDs is the compression artifacting.

I know they're rescanning a few scenes in HD for the DS9 documentary. It'd be pretty interesting to compare the ML-upscaled version with it.

One of the other interesting things is that while CBS may not have all of the source files for most of the VFX shots: The original artists do have many of them, and would likely offer them up in a heartbeat. The original 3D models and scenes for DS9 and Voyager are incredibly detailed, and would be more than adequate in HD. In many cases, it'd just be a matter of loading up the files, changing the output resolution, and mashing the "render" button.

> The original artists do have many of them, and would likely offer them up in a heartbeat

Indeed. I think its TrekCore that has some HD images of re-renders of the 3D model of Voyager used on the show. They are so detailed, you can start to see the where the 3D artists copy/pasted the same empty sickbay stock photo in various places around the ship to show there is something inside the windows.

I don't think the ML-upscaled scenes will compare favorably to the new 35mm scans. They don't really look a whole lot better to me than the DVDs upscaled with a normal high quality scaling algorithm.

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