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  • Cursed SiliconCursedSilicon@treehouse.systems
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:19 PM

    Okay fedifolk. I need y'alls opinions (boosts would also be massively appreciated)

    I need to acquire all of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in a "not absolutely garbage quality" format.

    No complete MST3k DVD box set exists. Buying all 38 DVD volumes would cost somewhere around $2,000

    There's a guy on YouTube (and Internet Archive) who's been "remastering" the episodes, allegedly from DVD.

    But he's "AI upscaled" them to 1080P/4K and also 60 FPS videos

    Tl;dr of the question: Does "AI upscaled video" fall under the same blanket "fuck AI" ethically for folks as LLM's? I'm not actually clear how different (if at all) the use cases are

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Replies

  • Cursed SiliconCursedSilicon@treehouse.systems
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:24 PM

    To be clear. I genuinely don't...know how "AI video upscaling" actually *works* (and I'm...not about to dive down the rabbit hole and find out)

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  • Cursed SiliconCursedSilicon@treehouse.systems
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:25 PM

    But also I wanna be clear: I *will* fucking suck a dick through a garden hose if someone could hook me up with rips of all 38 of the MST3k DVD volumes. That shit is LITERALLY a couple thousand dollars to purchase now

    I don't want a torrent file. Just running MakeMKV on each DVD and then putting them somewhere I can rsync them. I've got plenty enough compute power to *properly* re-encode them and make a torrent (and IA upload)

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  • Techokamitechokami@woof.tech
    Nov 4, 2026, 12:02 AM

    @CursedSilicon @green I was going to suggest using a youtube downloader on the official MST3K channel, since they do upload A LOT of the episodes (and the DVD extras!) but it's not a complete archive and I think you'd have to split the compilation videos manually for certain episodes...

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  • Cursed SiliconCursedSilicon@treehouse.systems
    Nov 4, 2026, 1:38 AM

    @pencilears It looks like they've got the individual movies instead of the "Volumes"

    But. Still may be a step forward

    Edit: THEY'VE. Goddammit auto correct

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  • Markusmbirth@mbirth.uk
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:26 PM

    @CursedSilicon There are also a few free RiffTrax on YouTube. Since they're audio-only, you're also free to find better source material and put the audio track on that.

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  • Þommythomasjwebb@mastodon.social
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:27 PM

    @CursedSilicon I'd be really curious what the actual tech being used is but there are plenty of local models that are useful in image manipulation. I'd put it in the evil category if it's using datacenters.

    It just feels like a waste of disk space to me to just guess the additional detail, possibly incorrectly. It might look just as good to ffplay dvd rips using its best upscaling algorithm.

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  • Lucky ✨lucky@mastodon.nz
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:27 PM

    @CursedSilicon it's complicated... it's not identical to what we think of as "generative AI" or LLMs but is parceled with many of the same problems and IS, in some ways, generative. Either way I'm comfortable hating on it because it's lossy and hallucinatory so when I upscale something I'm getting things that aren't there as well as enhancing things that are. But sometimes it's the cleanest thing we have available :(

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  • Lucky ✨lucky@mastodon.nz
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:29 PM

    @CursedSilicon I know that the Steam rerelease of a beloved PS1 game from my childhood (Tail of the Sun) used AI upscaling on a lot of the textures because the original working files no longer exist even with the same studio. I'm unsure as to whether to let it sour me on the whole thing and am comfortable having complex feelings on it, but I would never use it in my own projects

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  • StellaFoxxie :netkitty:StellaFoxxie@oldbytes.space
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:27 PM

    @CursedSilicon i think that boosting the framerate of video is a dumb idea that always looks really bad and so is trying to upscale analog video to hd.

    that's just my opinion regardless of ai usage lol shit's ugly

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  • Topaz 🐇TopazRabbit@oldbytes.space
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:28 PM

    @CursedSilicon 60fps sounds like motion smoothing hecc. No thanks, I'll keep my potato rips with the SciFi channel commercials during the breaks.

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  • Cursed SiliconCursedSilicon@treehouse.systems
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:29 PM

    @TopazRabbit I wouldn't be half as annoyed if the person who did the rips I *have* didn't fucking

    - Crop them to 640 x 480 (from NTSC 720 x 480)

    - Fucking use the most low bitrate H.264 + MP3 in an *AVI* container possible

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  • Topaz 🐇TopazRabbit@oldbytes.space
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:32 PM

    @CursedSilicon Ugh the cropping is the worst part of that, why. The rips I have seem to be 540x360 so at least they're not cropped, and they're H264/AAC, but they're still pretty potato-y.

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  • thedæmon (Clay Ayers) [he / him]thedaemon@snac.9front.club
    Nov 4, 2026, 12:28 AM
    Well it sounds like they are bad upscales at any rate. I wanted to let it be known if it's "ai" and local on your PC, it's not "ai" and an LLM, so that's why I voted that way. I use "ai" waifusomething or other for VLC for anime, it's not "ai" as in the unethical kind. Wow this is a nightmare no wonder you put up a poll.

    CC: @TopazRabbit@oldbytes.space
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  • Gorgeous na Shock!indigoparadox@mastodon.social
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:38 PM

    @CursedSilicon I remain neutral on the ethical question, but I gotta say for me Mst3k just isn't Mst3k if it's not at 240p with a layer of NTSC fuzz and sound like it was recorded off of a Radio Shack crystal radio.

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  • :omya_linux: sinzasinza@oldbytes.space
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:58 PM

    @CursedSilicon This is to say that I have some degree of ethical concerns from an archivist POV (and voted "fuck them"). However I don't know if it does the same general harms as LLMs.

    That being said, LLM corporations are horribly problematic in the archivist regard too, as you probably know. 🙃

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  • Chipbytex64@awesome.garden
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:46 PM

    @CursedSilicon It kind of depends on what _they_ mean by “AI upscaled”, as there are many approaches. But I think if you have ethical issues with sourcing training data, probably any of these are disqualifying.

    Personally, I’d avoid it for the same reason I distrust most genAI content - because I don’t believe the operators have audited the output for more than simple, cursory cases, which means it’s your job to tolerate the errors.

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  • poleguy looking for lost toolspoleguy@mastodon.social
    Nov 3, 2026, 11:56 PM

    @CursedSilicon I don't think anybody could afford to do "AI upscaling" on a commercial data-center cloud account if it actually used an LLM.

    It's conventional ML, marketed as "AI"? Don't throw out the baby with the bath water... the ML algorithms are generally efficient and powerful and not as deeply ethically troubling when compared to LLM's.

    The proof is in the pudding: Does it look like generative slop? Does this person have a good reputation and critical eye? Do you like the results?

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  • nytpu the wyvernnytpu@tilde.zone
    Nov 4, 2026, 12:17 AM

    @CursedSilicon Not because it's unethical (no clue but the upscaling models other than DLSS5 don't seem "generative") but because the results are objectively shit

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  • apolloowlapolloowl@pawb.fun
    Nov 4, 2026, 12:17 AM

    @CursedSilicon I don't have as much of an ethical issue with upscalers, same way I don't mind FSR, XeSS, or DLSS, I just think they all look like trash

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  • scrottie (he/him/them)scrottie@bsd.network
    Nov 4, 2026, 12:34 AM

    @CursedSilicon This *may be better than what upscalers in TVs were doing and *what early generation unscalers were doing [sorry, fixing some serious editing malfunction there], but on eg bar TVs, I've been just completely distracted and fascinated by the phantoms all around the edges of where the picture is noisy or busy. You really don't notice them at first, then you start to pick up on just barely perceptible artefacts... faces appearing in the grass in football matches... things like that. But MST3k has a lot less high entropy moving texture that lends itself to that so it may be fine for that reason too. Maybe the seller has original video? From an ethics standpoint, it was likely trained on imagary gained against consent and through abusive scraping, or I'd assume so unless proven otherwise, but it isn't trying to create a creative work that destroys communities, so there's that at least. Good luck in your pursuit!

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  • EthanEthanol@toot.cat
    Nov 4, 2026, 12:52 AM

    @CursedSilicon I do not consider it to be on the same level of reprehensible as most generative AI but it does fuck over artistic intent to such a significant degree that it is effectively worthless. Upscaling tends to hallucinate and shave off intended artistic details, artificially increased framerate kills any nuance to the intending timing of movement.

    Its kind of like a bad, careless remaster. Thinking of the GTA remake that glossed over the nuts and turned them into circles.

    Image attached toot
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