The Quest for HD: Star Trek: Deep Space 9 AI Upscaling (2020–2021)
While Star Trek: The Next Generation received a glorious high-definition remaster from the original film, its successor, Deep Space 9 (DS9), remains trapped in the standard definition (SD) era of the 1990s. Between 2020 and 2021, a dedicated community of fans and tech enthusiasts leveraged rapidly advancing artificial intelligence to bridge this gap, creating unofficial 1080p versions of the series, starting with Season 1. The AI Upscaling Movement
The surge in DS9 upscaling projects during 2020 was fueled by the accessibility of machine learning tools like Topaz Video Enhance AI. Unlike traditional upscaling, which simply stretches pixels, AI models use trained neural networks to "guess" missing details, sharpening edges and removing the "blocky" artifacts typical of 480p DVDs. Several key projects emerged during this period:
Project Defiant: One of the most prominent groups, they released full seasons in 1080p+. Their workflow involved upscaling the source to 4K to maximize detail retention before compressing the final output to 1080p using the x265 (HEVC) codec to keep file sizes manageable—typically around 26 GB per season.
QueerWorm’s DS9 Upscale: This project focused on a slightly lower 960p resolution, arguing that pushing standard definition too far into 1080p or 4K resulted in "diminishing returns" and unnatural-looking "waxy" skin textures.
ExtremeTech Tutorials: Technical experts provided detailed blueprints for fans to perform their own upscales, highlighting the massive hardware requirements, such as NVIDIA RTX GPUs and days of processing time for a single season. Why Season 1 Presented a Unique Challenge star trek deep space 9 s01 ai upscale 1080p 2020 2021
The first season of DS9, released in 1993, is notoriously difficult to upscale compared to later years. Early episodes often suffer from softer focus and more film grain, which AI models sometimes mistake for digital noise.
Project Defiant: DS9 1080p+ Upscale Now Available : r/startrek
TLDR: DS9 upscale is here. Skip all the way to the bottom for instructions on where to get it. We've opted to release it in 1080p+ Reddit·r/startrek
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (DS9) has long remained the "holy grail" for fans seeking a high-definition remaster. Unlike The Next Generation, which received a costly official film-to-digital restoration, DS9 and Voyager were edited on standard-definition tape, making an official 1080p release an expensive $40 million prospect.
In 2020 and 2021, a wave of community-driven AI Upscale projects emerged to fill this void, leveraging machine learning to transform the aging 480i DVD sources into crisp 1080p experiences. Key Fan Projects (2020–2021) The Quest for HD: Star Trek: Deep Space
Several dedicated groups and individuals released full-series upscales during this period, each using different methodologies:
Project Defiant (Sept 2020): Often considered the gold standard of that era, this project released all seven seasons in 1080p+. They first upscaled the footage to 4K to maximize detail retention before downsampling it back to 1080p for better file size management.
JoyBell and UTRCorp (Late 2020): A more storage-friendly alternative, releasing the series in 1080p at approximately 12 GB per season.
QueerWorm (June 2020): Focused on a 960p VBR (Variable Bit Rate) output. This project prioritized avoiding "hallucinated" details often seen in aggressive 4K upscales, maintaining a look closer to the original broadcast while sharpening edges.
Deep Space Nine Upscale Project (DS9UP): Led by Joel Hruska at ExtremeTech, this initiative provided detailed technical guides and benchmarks throughout 2020. The Technology: Topaz Video Enhance AI Compatibility: The upscaled content is formatted to be
Most of these projects utilized Topaz Video Enhance AI (now Topaz Video AI). This software uses neural networks to guess missing pixels based on patterns found in thousands of other high-quality images.
If you’ve ever popped in the original DS9 DVDs, you know the pain. The live-action footage was technically shot on 35mm film, but the final edit was transferred to standard definition tape. The result? A noisy, soft image with noticeable haloing. Space battles were a smear of gray pixels. The intricate details of the Cardassian-designed Promenade—the grime on the walls, the texture of Odo’s bucket—were lost to MPEG-2 compression.
The breakthrough in 2020 and 2021 came from the democratization of AI upscaling software. Unlike traditional upscaling, which simply stretches an image and blurs the pixels (bicubic or bilinear interpolation), AI upscaling uses Neural Networks (specifically Convolutional Neural Networks) trained on millions of image pairs.
The primary tool used by the community during this period was Topaz Gigapixel AI and Video Enhance AI.