Once again I cry when reading about DS9 or Voyager getting the HD treatment.
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Ditto. Especially DS9, which had the best costuming and intricate set detail by far. A shame that TNG didn't meet intended expectations at the time.
I'll admit, f/x space shots tend to fare better with enhancing/upscaling, partly because they're simpler with comparatively less detail in the first place. Babylon 5 was astounding, considering the graininess of the film, but the upscaled f/x were incredible.
Any 4K releases where going back to the original negs and scanning then repairing faded color, dust specks, tears, etc, etc, look truly magnificent - especially when compared to any 4K upscale can do (the latter which isn't as much "restoring" as "enhancing"...). Even a 2K scan from the negs (e.g. TNG, last decade, when 4K was just around the corner but still too expensive to invest in) looks fantastic and looks exponentially more detailed than enhancing limited detail from two deinterlaced/combined 480i fields, though to be fair the quality of some upscales DOES do a massive improvement on the VT "originals", but if the original film is there, definitely preserve it while possible. (Granted, going from 1080P to 4K is better, and nowadays even ENT's 720P rendered f/x could be upscaled and few would notice much or anything at all. Especially as most movies with CGI from the 2000s onward were rendered in 2K at best, upscaling is going to be inevitable at some point for some higher resolutions, so it's still great that the technologies are being developed and improved upon.)
A quick side-note: MTBF is still an estimate and a batch of film, tape, etc, can degrade or go bad long before its rated 100 years or whatever - indeed, an example involves some music bands in the early-80s had to deal with a new tape substrate, dealt with degradation caused massive problems and, weeks later, begged to do a session re-record to reclaim lost fidelity and, yeah, they were not recording to a vinyl platter... (30IPS tape, at least. Look up Star Trek TOS's massive CD set as it's amazing what was kept or found, as I recall 30IPS being referenced there, then count the number of seconds or minutes per track. That's a fun ton of tape, required for crisp clear dialogue with carefully applied backing music - with tools that today's technicians would find to be extremely primitive...)
Back to enhancing rather than reasons to do a ground-up remaster: Topaz being one of the better options, especially for native videotape material, still has telltale conversion signs, can't get at every nuance and especially if too much material has compression or poor transfer issues (when moved from film to tape for editing in the 90s), and so on. But it definitely does some fantastic work -- the right tools for the right mediums is always key. Since Trek was filmed, it makes more sense to go to it and eke out so much more lush and real detail, especially while the film negs are usable - and still should be for a few decades, anyhow.
If nothing else, there's some fun in reading this:
Which films are real 4K (UHD), re-mastered or up-scaled? Check out if the movie or TV show you own is Real 4K or fake.
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