With the release yesterday of the Blu-ray sampler of episodes from “Star Trek: The Next Generation”, questions have turned to what kind of release schedule is planned for the season box-sets for this quite massive undertaking, and will the same process be applied to other Trek spin-offs like “Deep Space Nine,” “Voyager” and “Enterprise”.

Talking with StarTrek.Com, CBS Home Entertainment’s executive VP Ken Ross says “it was and continues to be an enormous project that will take several years to complete. From a manpower perspective, we have more than 20 people working on this project full time in three shifts 24 hours a day. it’s a huge commitment to transfer all seven seasons to high definition.”

How big? The first season alone had “more than 1,700 VFX shots to recreate”. In fact it took months to physically transport the whole series backlog of footage – 2,500 cartons with at least 25,000 reels of film in them – from long-term storage in a Pennsylvanian salt mine to Los Angeles where the remastering is happening.

For those planning to wait for a ‘complete series’ box-set and/or waiting to get it at a fairly cheap rate – you’re going to be waiting for quite some time. Right now the first season box-set is looking to hit either “late Summer or early Fall”.

Due to the size of the undertaking they’re aiming to release two seasons per year which would mean the seventh and final season would be done and out sometime in 2015.

As for the other shows in the Trek canon? “Our focus right now is on TNG, but we will certainly consider all of the other Star Trek series”.