No honest review ignores the flaws. Because DS9 was shot at 24fps film but telecined to 30fps video, early 2020 AI upscales sometimes misinterpreted motion, leading to a subtle "soap opera effect" or edge shimmer on fast movements (like a Klingon charging or a runabout docking). Purists noticed. But for most viewers on a 4K TV, sitting 8 feet away, the improvement was staggering.
The DVD source had notoriously flat, washed-out colors and a slight red push. The 2020 upscale project included a manual color pass, boosting contrast and bringing the blacks to true level. This was critical for DS9’s setting—the dark, moody interiors of the station needed depth, not muddy gray. star trek deep space 9 s01 ai upscale 4k 2020
Each frame (approximately 45,000 frames per episode) was fed into Topaz Video Enhance AI. The key model used was "Gaia" or "Artemis," tuned specifically for live-action content. The AI was trained on millions of pairs of low-res and high-res images to: No honest review ignores the flaws
The 2020 upscales (often using Topaz Video Enhance AI or ESRGAN variants) were a breakthrough because neural networks had finally learned to interpret texture. Instead of just stretching pixels, the AI was trained on high-resolution footage to predict what details should exist. But for most viewers on a 4K TV,
To understand why the 2020 AI upscale was a miracle, you have to understand the technical hell of 90s television.