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.
This certainly has to do with bad deinterlacing… You are right: Especially NTSC-DVDs can be watched best, when you set HDMI to 576i. That may be the mode your player used.
I just looked into the upscaled pilot. Well, I don’t want to be negative, but it’s not for me. And I still think, there is not REALLY much done about new details. Everything Topaz did, seem to me to be also possible with slight sharpenings (if you know how) and simple resizing.
But: This can be the future, and everything new needs pioneers who just do it, become better and better, inspire even better techniques, a. s. o.
Maybe it’s also about youth and age. I watched my first Star Trek episodes in Germany in 1972, so I think I can also wait a few years longer to see something really revolutionary.
But keep on to move forward, where no man has gone before!
FrankB,
The problem is DS9 itself. There’s a reason I didn’t use Emissary (1x01) to show off my work. Early Deep Space 9 does not respond to upscaling nearly as well as later DS9 does. It’s not as clear. It’s not as sharp. It makes early greenscreen effects look really fake, and the footage can almost look as though it’s being spliced in from VHS. There’s moire on everything, the models are dull, and it scarcely looks like an upgrade. Some of that is baked right into the source and looks bad there (like the early holodeck scene), but gets magnified by the upscaler. But the show looks bad – really bad – on DVD.
It’s Deep Space Nine’s fault. And the reason I know that is because later episodes of the show, filmed with different techniques, upscale beautifully using the exact same settings.
I do not yet know how to meaningfully clean up Emissary, and Animaxx will tell you that my QTGMC script that I shared with him is excellent for denoising and fixing artifacts. It’s not good enough. Sharpening isn’t enough. The rainbow filters I’ve run against the content haven’t worked, and it’s very hard to draw detail out of scenes.
The level of improvement I get in Emissary is less than half the improvement I get in episodes from Season 4 forward.