Trekkies rejoice! Star Trek: Voyager is being unofficially remastered in 4K

We have a bit of a soft spot for Star Trek: Voyager and if you do too then you'll love the idea that it's being remastered (unofficially) in 4K.

It's hard to believe that it's been 25 years since Voyager first aired. With Captain Janeway and her crew trekking through the Delta Quadrant on their way home over seven series spanning six years until 2001. 

Things looked a bit different back then as the show was filmed for old-fashioned televisions which didn't even have a modern aspect ratio. 

Star Trek: Voyager might have been pioneering, being the first Star Trek series to use CGI footage for the exterior space shots rather than models, but it was still filmed in a 480p 4:3 format. 

However, Billy Reichard, a fan of the series, has set about bringing new life to the show by using artificial intelligence to upgrade the original footage to 4K. 

The results are impressive too. Using a mid-range PC, Billy Reichard has employed Topaz Labs machine learning software to upgrade and improve the original footage. 

He explains that it takes around 13 hours to process an entire episode and even then it's not perfect. Voyager was recorded with a variable frame rate which means the audio is sometimes out of sync and the AI doesn't take this into account. Some human editing is required to manually re-sync the audio with the scenes. 

We applaud his efforts and hope to see more in future. 

It's also great to see the different ways Topaz Labs AI technology is being used. We only just recently saw it employed to upscaled an 1886 film to 4K and that was thoroughly impressive too. 

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