This led to the birth of the Deep Space Nine Upscale Project (DS9UP) , a volunteer-driven initiative with a clear goal: to create a version of the series that is "worth watching in the modern era of 4K and HD televisions and monitors". The fan editor behind the project, Joel Hruska, worked tirelessly over several years to develop and document a replicable, high-quality method. The result is the widely recognized "Star Trek Deep Space 9 S01 AI Upscale 4K (2020)" and the subsequent improved encodes and tutorials that he continued to refine through 2022 and beyond.
With no official solution on the horizon, fans stepped in. By 2020, this movement had coalesced into a few key projects that form the backbone of search results for this keyword. star trek deep space 9 s01 ai upscale 4k 2020
Mixed Sources: Episodes in Season 1 frequently cut between live-action film transfers and early CGI models. Early AI models in 2020 would often sharpen live-action beautifully but turn CGI into a blocky, distorted mess. Pioneers had to segment episodes, applying different AI models (like Gaia-CG for space shots and Artemis-HQ for human faces) frame by frame. This led to the birth of the Deep
Watching "Emissary" in the 2020 4K upscale is a religious experience. The opening sequence—a zoom out from the wormhole to the golden desert of Bajor—finally looks like it belongs in the 21st century. With no official solution on the horizon, fans stepped in
Season 1 of DS9 (1993) is a unique beast. It's lighter, more exploratory, and visually rougher than the gritty, war-torn seasons that followed. The station's Promenade and the Ops center are flooded with warm, sometimes muddy lighting. The original SD video exhibits classic issues: soft focus, dot crawl, color bleeding, and compression artifacts. An upscale had to sharpen without adding halos, and denoise without turning Quark's skin into wax.
But an official remaster does not exist. So compared to the official DVD? The 2020 AI upscale is a revelation. It turns a TV show that looked like a 1990s VHS into something that looks like a pristine 1080p broadcast from 2015. It is watchable, enjoyable, and for many fans, it is the definitive way to experience the first season of the best Star Trek series ever made.
Since these are fan projects, they exist in a legal gray area and aren't available on official platforms like Paramount+. However, the 2019 documentary What We Left Behind featured several minutes of DS9 footage officially remastered in HD/4K, proving just how beautiful the show could look if given a full studio budget.