The Pink Floyd Live at Pompeii Fan Remaster That Got Shut Down

In 2021, a fan named Steve Raine spent months training an AI model on frames from the original 16mm film of Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii to upscale it to 4K. The result was stunning—sharper detail, cleaner grain, and colors that looked closer to what the band saw in 1972 than any official release had managed. Pink Floyd’s management even privately admitted the quality was impressive. But they still sent a cease-and-desist.

The fan remaster was never monetized; Raine uploaded it to YouTube and a torrent site for free. The problem wasn’t quality—it was control. Pink Floyd’s legal team argued the upscale created an unauthorized derivative work, and they had to protect the copyright, especially because a proper 4K restoration was reportedly in the works for the band’s own archive. The takedown was swift, and Raine complied.

What stings is that the fan version likely remains the best-looking version of the film available anywhere. The official Blu-ray is from a standard HD transfer; the fan upscale used machine learning to reconstruct detail that wasn’t there in the original scan. It’s a perfect example of the tension between fan passion and intellectual property—and why some of the most historically important concert films still live in bootleg-friendly shadows.