(June, 2021)
Excerpt:
"Lebowitz worked for the special effects company Foundation Imaging, which did CGI effects for Babylon 5, and DS9, and Voyager. His insight and comments sparked an interesting sidetrack for the show.
“Rob [Burnett] knows a lot about the process [of how to upgrade the shows], but it all just comes down to money and desire,” said Lebowitz. “One of the issues that we knew was that Next Generation’s remaster was kind of on the cusp of the end of physical media.”
“People had already bought [TNG], so we’d already heard the story that [Paramount] didn’t make a lot of money back on the Next Gen remaster,” said Lebowitz. “So now, the economic model is streaming and how many subscribers you get.”
“The rough calculations that I did said that for the cost of maybe 5 or 6 episodes — episodes — of Discovery or Picard, you could remaster all 14 seasons of DS9 and Voyager,” said Lebowitz.
The cost of each episode of Discovery, as reported by Variety, is between $8 and $8.5 million. Burnett said that it would cost $40 million to remaster DS9 and Voyager. So, according to Lebowitz’s math, if Paramount+ did spend the sum of 6 episodes of Discovery ($42 million), they would be able to upgrade both series and have $2 million to spare."
Source: https://heavy.com/entertainment/star-trek/funding-the-hd-conversion-of-ds9-voyager/