@ Everyone: I really recommend reading Joels articles over on extremetech - they are really well done!
@ Joel:
I immensely enjoyed what you have said in your latest outing about fans.
While it is true that copyright is a serious matter, fans are not doing this in order to hurt the studios or companies, quite the opposite actually - as you have stated, many want to show ways to inspire companies to do their work differently to make the process perhaps more affordable.
Also, sometimes fans (like me) are also doing it out of a certain “necessity”. And while the following example is not meant to be some sort of apology or defense to use grey areas (in a copyright sense), it may add another dimension to the topic of fan remastering/upscaling:
TVs, screens, projectors, laser tv … everything continues to evolve, generally in the directions “larger, more detailed, ai-enhancing”.
And while those developments are great for modern content (or generally for content with a certain quality level), they can turn out to be horrific for older sources.
In my case: I love some of the old 80’s and 90’s classics, many of them have only been released on DVD (like DS9 and Voyager). So when I got a really high end TV for my birthday last year I was so happy, because the quality was (and still is) amazing, but naturally they only present those devices against “newer stuff”, which of course looks brilliant.
But when you play something that has some dust on it, the magic is all but gone. Now I don’t want to say that the original DVDs can’t be watched, but especially early seasons (like DS9s first) look bad on a 55` UHD (even with tweaked settings there is only so much the device can do).
So if you are a fan, happen to have great tech on hand (like a good tv) you obviously would want to enjoy even your old shows in at least “decent” quality. This was one of the reasons I got started thinking about upscaling, since many modern devices are designed to go forward, not back.
So I do understand the urge to improve things yourself if you can.
Another little note here: My old device had a mode (unfortunately I can’t remember the exact name, let’s just call it “Pure SD-Resolution”) which played files in their natural ratio/size, only going to a max of 1080p, which - funny as it sounds - looked better than the 4K upscale my present device does. So the only way around that is to use a separate player, that can play back the older files in original resolution, since the TV always upscales (which is as I have said fine for everything else, just not the older shows).
So the technical evolution of playback devices may “force” fans to take action in order to keep enjoying their shows because they look worse through enhancements they can’t change manually on the devices themselves.