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I used to love this show back in the 1990's and avidly followed the show's progress on the creator's website as it happened... but I've since mainly forgotten about it. I wasn't a fan of the impromptu 5th season nor of the followup movies and iirc single season of the spin off show. Unlike Star Trek and Star Wars, I've never bought the DVDs (which were of inferior quality from what I heard) nor even rewatched the show in its entirety. For a while, I couldn't even find it streaming anywhere readily accessible as I found out that it was exclusively on some obscure Verizon streaming network and then later on the obviously more mainstream Amazon Prime though the quality of both was still the substandard DVD version. Well, now finally after 20+ years we have an HD version of both the live action and the special effects.
For the live version, they rescanned the original film (16mm?) in 4k, removed scratches, and downres'ed it to 1080p for this release. The special effects weren't redone but rather AI-upres'ed to 1080p to match the live action. Both are in the old 4:3 boxier screen format as the special effects were only done to that so it should have bars on both sides. The CGI is noticeably crisper but I'd say the live action stuff only moderately so. I'm not a big cinephile but it seems like the film grain is pretty coarse and the details feels to me more like a 720p upgrade over the old standard definition rather than a full native 1080p bluray quality. I don't personally have HBO Max but, if they come out with a bluray set of the series, that would be something I'd be interested in picking up!
This is a series I would buy a second time just for the special effects shots in their original aspect ratio. I take it this version is only available through HBOMax? Please keep us updated on any DVD or Blue Ray release.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: This is a series I would buy a second time just for the special effects shots in their original aspect ratio. I take it this version is only available through HBOMax? Please keep us updated on any DVD or Blue Ray release.
Supposedly the HD verson is also for purchase on Prime and iTunes as well but honestly I never buy digital shows/movies. Either I stream it as part of a subscription or buy a physical copy.
We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
We’re pretty much the same, but I’d make an exception to be able to show my son Babylon 5 as it was meant to be seen.
We recently started Stargate SG1 with him because it popped up on Netflix...Even though we also own the disks. Better to have them and not need them, I guess.
I've never bought the DVDs (which were of inferior quality from what I heard)
Something of an understatement, sadly. Though I believe there was a second version that wasn't quite so bad.
Everything from the physical quality of the disc to the usability of the menus was pretty starkly terrible.
That's sad to hear and likely part of why the show isn't as popular now as it was back then compared with contemporaries. Between that inferior DVD quality, missing the entire original bluray era, and the almost complete lack of mainstream streaming options for years at a time, it's been largely forgotten unless you were a fan during the initial run.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/05 21:53:09
We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
warboss wrote: I don't personally have HBO Max but, if they come out with a bluray set of the series, that would be something I'd be interested in picking up!
From what they've said, blu-ray version will only be released where HBO is NOT available. It may eventually filter out to the rest of the market but not right now.
I'm OVER 50 (and so far over everyone's BS, too).
Old enough to know better, young enough to not give a ****.
That is not dead which can eternal lie ...
... and yet, with strange aeons, even death may die.
I heard a story that Strazynski wanted to film the whole thing in widescreen and crop down for initial broadcast, as he could see that 4:3 was on it’s way out, but the studio wouldn’t stump up the cash to buy the VFX team 16:9 reference monitors (which were insanely expensive at the time), hence the weird format differences. Apparently Warner Bros. also lost some, if not all, of the original masters (at least for a while) so the DVDs were made from the broadcast tapes rather than the source material. It’s a real shame, because if the whole thing had been done in film quality 16:9 as JMS wanted it would have been virtually HD from the start, with no work required.
Zed wrote: *All statements reflect my opinion at this moment. if some sort of pretty new model gets released (or if I change my mind at random) I reserve the right to jump on any bandwagon at will.
Jadenim wrote: I heard a story that Strazynski wanted to film the whole thing in widescreen and crop down for initial broadcast, as he could see that 4:3 was on it’s way out, but the studio wouldn’t stump up the cash to buy the VFX team 16:9 reference monitors (which were insanely expensive at the time), hence the weird format differences. Apparently Warner Bros. also lost some, if not all, of the original masters (at least for a while) so the DVDs were made from the broadcast tapes rather than the source material. It’s a real shame, because if the whole thing had been done in film quality 16:9 as JMS wanted it would have been virtually HD from the start, with no work required.
Obviously I have no insider info but that's corroborated amongst other things if you go down the embedded link rabbit hole in the article I posted.
Foundation Imaging, which produced the CGI for the pilot through to season three, was apparently willing, and able, to produce widescreen effects. Co-founder Ron Thornton, who passed away in 2016, said that his company "offered to do all of Babylon 5 in widescreen." Quotes attributed to Thornton on the JMSNews forum point the finger over a fight regarding a $5,000 HD "reference monitor so we could check our output."
That request was apparently denied, either by Ken Parks, WB's then-business affairs chief, or the show's co-executive producer Douglas Netter. Thornton went on to say that "each blamed the other," but the decision meant that "for $75 an episode, they could have had awesome, near hi-def." Unfortunately, it is difficult to verify his account, and Parks died in 2014 while Netter passed away last year.
"There was not a breakdown over a monitor," John Copeland, who produced Babylon 5 and its sequel, Crusade, told Engadget. Copeland, now the owner of Rancho Olivos olive oils, says that "Ron [Thornton] wanted to get paid for re-rendering everything." And render time was the issue that forced every compromise when it came to making the show's visual effects. But Copeland feels Warner Bros. itself was the problem, rather than visual effects.
"We had set up the show to make the transition to what was, at the time, called Advanced Television Technology," he said. "Everybody knew that [HD] was coming, and that the preferred format would be 16:9," and Copeland toured how other Warner shows were planning for the future. On Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman, the team "were doing a 'video hack' to retransfer the negative, stretched in such a way that it would unfold in a 16:9 frame." Unfortunately, the results, while meeting the requirements for widescreen TV, "looked absolutely awful."
So Copeland approached the studio and said that they would "shoot in a 1:78 (widescreen) format, and we'll compose for 4:3, but frame for 16:9." And at the end, the production team "gave them everything in two formats [4:3 and 16:9] with the exception of the visual effects." But, that wasn't a problem, because Warners' Advanced Technology Center had a plan to remedy the problem.
"This company in Sweden, called Teranex, were way ahead of the curve in knowing people would need to upconvert standard def to high definition." Warners owned a Teranex box, and the idea was that, eventually, the 4:3 CGI sequences would be upconverted and integrated into the 16:9 footage. It wouldn't be perfect, but it would look pretty good. But rather than doing it, in the end WB simply reconverted the futzed Portuguese and Belgium footage to NTSC and sold it.
The reason that the show was never given the proper Teranex treatment was, according to Copeland, "because they didn't wanna spend the money." He explained that in the days before DVDs were expected to be lavished with extras, home video departments just took existing material, slapped it in a box and reaped the rewards of doing so.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
BobtheInquisitor wrote: We’re pretty much the same, but I’d make an exception to be able to show my son Babylon 5 as it was meant to be seen.
We recently started Stargate SG1 with him because it popped up on Netflix...Even though we also own the disks. Better to have them and not need them, I guess.
You make wise choices. Just make sure to stop SG1 before Colonel O'Neill turns to pure snark because the actor obviously doesn't want to be there and is just phoning it in.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/02/05 23:02:47
We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
We watched the whole show through, and Atlantis too, when my wife was recovering from surgeries. When O’Neill started becoming annoying, other characters stepped up to keep us interested. There’s an undeniable drop in quality, but like Buffy season 4 we get to spend a not-unwatchable time with characters we mostly enjoy.
I was never a fan of Vala or Mitchell nor of the Ori in general so the last season of two were mostly a miss for me kind of like the last season of B5 and the spin offs. YMMV.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/06 17:24:08
We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
I own everything on DVD including all the made for TV movies. still one of the best written scifi shows ever made with character acting/development that is some of the best ever to be put to film of any genre,
It was a labor of love done on a shoestring budget that was groundbreaking in many of the concepts and technologies it pioneered
Yes everybody was pissed about the season 4/5 debacle....but what were they supposed to do when they though it was not getting a 5th season? i can imagine how much better it would have been had they fully finished the shadow war and earth civil war arc over another season.
At least season 5 had gems like "sleeping in light"
I also loved both "in the begining" and "a call to arms" tv movies.
GAMES-DUST1947/infinity/B5 wars/epic 40K/5th ed 40K/victory at sea/warmachine/battle tactics/monpoc/battletech/battlefleet gothic/castles in the sky,/heavy gear
It was a labor of love done on a shoestring budget that was groundbreaking in many of the concepts and technologies it pioneered
I wouldn't say shoestring but I'd wholeheartedly agree that they did an amazing job with what they were given.
Straczynski estimated that each of their episodes cost US$650,000 to make, compared to the US$1.5 million cost of each episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Last year, I watched interviews on youtube from the 90's where they were explaining how they saved money on the season 1/2 shots by rendering them with banks of much cheaper high end but still just off the shelf Amiga computers with video toaster boards installed instead of splurging on $35k+ each Silicon Graphics workstations.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/06 17:38:17
We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
warboss wrote: I was never a fan of Vala or Mitchell nor of the Ori in general so the last season of two were mostly a miss for me kind of like the last season of B5 and the spin offs. YMMV.
I think once they hit the Ori and Replicator story lines the series was starting to get a bit long in the tooth. It was basically stuck trying to advance its own storyline and setting, whilst also trying to still be the SG1 team going out on weekly adventures in a super secret bunker that no one else knew of. Only by that stage they were REALLY stretching the storylines to have 5 people take on whole alien civilizations without the rest of the Earth ever knowing. They were also somewhat recycling the story concepts and such.
It was fun and it was very Stargate* but it had reached a point where it either needed to change or come to a close.
*though at some point they gave up needing Daniel to translate as all the aliens started speaking American
Overread wrote: I think once they hit the Ori and Replicator story lines the series was starting to get a bit long in the tooth.
Yeah, my issue with the Ori basically is the same as with Star Wars' The Force Awakens. It's Malibu Spacey, but with a new helmet. They just finished up a multiseason epic storyline where the SGC battled a powerful space empire ruled by evil super advanced functionally immortal aliens who demand their primitive subjects worship them as gods... to start to battle a powerful space empire ruled by super advanced aliens who demand that their primitive subjects worship them as gods. But this one is totally different! Because they ARE immortal and sorta kinda gods! Yeahhhh....
*though at some point they gave up needing Daniel to translate as all the aliens started speaking American
Well, in their defense, I imagine that most starfaring civilizations have advanced to the point where they logically have given up on using superfluous silent vowels in words like foetus and oesophagus.
Automatically Appended Next Post: On a more thread B5-related note about conflict with super advanced space alien empires, one of the things I'm looking most forward to in eventually rewatching B5 in its entirety is seeing how I view the proxy conflict between the Vorlons and Shadows. As I said before, I've only watched maybe a dozen episodes of B5 over the past two decades so my memory of the details is quite fuzzy and I'm curious if I'll appreciate the thought put into that.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2021/02/06 18:37:36
We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
Yeah, I think when O'Neil ceased to be a regular on the show, SG-1 just kind of stopped working. His character and the dynamics around him really made the cast's chemistry work and was central to the show.
At the same time he started stepping back, the show always found itself turning to plot lines and concepts that felt too different (and all at once all too familiar) from the show's origins. It was cool that humanity was becoming a galactic citizen toward the end, with it's own space fleet and strong alliances that weren't a desperate bid to just hold the Gould off a while longer.
But by that point it also just felt like a very different show that had long since advanced past the elements that made it fun in the first place. I don't think the closing seasons were bad, the show maintained a great quality of writing and acting throughout it's run, but I feel like it was reaching the point that the series just didn't have solid footing anymore.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/06 18:39:01
I’d say that’s fair. In fact, I might say you guys were being generous. The whole storyline of SG1 was pretty much done being fresh by the time Anubis showed up. From then on, the show wasn’t bad, but it felt like rehashed highlights, like TFA. There were still a few brilliant episodes per season, but the show was pretty much a sit com where the “sit” was “secret Friends fight space gods”. It was still enjoyable for me.
And Vala was one of my favorite characters. I still crack up thinking about this scene:
As for Babylon 5, I’ll never forget the fan community at the time, trying to piece together the clues, figure out what would happen next. It was like Lost, except good.
I'd also say that the Ori plot managed to basically be the same thing the story was doing before but somehow made it trite and cliche. Evil aliens pretending to be gods just isn't as cool when they're basically the catholic church. There's a thousand evil catholic church stories in the world. Going that route in a lot of ways felt like a regression from earlier (otherwise exactly the same) plots that just felt more inventive and novel for the effort.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/06 19:45:14
It never helped that the channel made it a policy to wait until the last legally possible moment to inform a show if they were cancelled, and their constant whining about "the wrong demographics" and, ugh
JMS got hosed by the network, too, but he had an entire arc strategy to build around, so it sort of worked out in the end.
"A guy who don't know the fearsomeness of money shouldn't be offering up opinions about society." -Kaneo Takarada, Kill la Kill
Big Mek Sparkz and his Band of Sparky Ting Huntas: 4,000 points
Our Lady of the Generous Heart: 2,000 points
Thousand Sons: One unbuilt Daemon Prince
Hoitash wrote: It never helped that the channel made it a policy to wait until the last legally possible moment to inform a show if they were cancelled, and their constant whining about "the wrong demographics" and, ugh
JMS got hosed by the network, too, but he had an entire arc strategy to build around, so it sort of worked out in the end.
Different network, however. JMS would have been better served sticking to his original end and not letting TNT talk him into a crappy additional season with a focus on divorces, alcoholism and other mundane drivel.
Has anyone here watched it on HBO max? If anyone has a sub, any first hand opinions on the quality compared to the DVDs if you have them as well?
I don't have a sub to that service though I may join up for a month over the summer to catch up on a half dozen things that by that point might make it worth it.
We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
I never really watched much of B5, but when I decided to try to start I rented the pilot from Netflix and it was one of those double-sided DVDs with the pilot on one side and a movie called In the Beginning on the other. I didn't know at the time that In the Beginning WASN'T the pilot, so when I put the disc in and it came up I watched it... Then I flipped the disc over and watched the otherside and realized the mistake I
'd made.
So, by this point I've forgotten most of what I saw, and it might be worth trying to revisit it from the actual start, but at the time I thought it was pointless to watch anymore since it was all spoiled for me in the beginning...
It was a labor of love done on a shoestring budget that was groundbreaking in many of the concepts and technologies it pioneered
I wouldn't say shoestring but I'd wholeheartedly agree that they did an amazing job with what they were given.
Straczynski estimated that each of their episodes cost US$650,000 to make, compared to the US$1.5 million cost of each episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
Last year, I watched interviews on youtube from the 90's where they were explaining how they saved money on the season 1/2 shots by rendering them with banks of much cheaper high end but still just off the shelf Amiga computers with video toaster boards installed instead of splurging on $35k+ each Silicon Graphics workstations.
Man I owned an amiga when i was a kid, you just gave me a multi megaton nostalgia rush....
I remember how the 'amiga shows' like b5, hercules, xena, wete going to topple the networks and crush the hollywood studio system, and usher in a new age of small, independent production firms making better movies free from the pablum factories that were running the media.
What happened?
"But the universe is a big place, and whatever happens, you will not be missed..."
They both won and got coopted. Shows like Buffy, Firefly, BSG, SG1 became more mainstream, and then the streaming services peeled away the mainstream back into lots of little, more or less creator-driven series.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
bbb wrote: I never really watched much of B5, but when I decided to try to start I rented the pilot from Netflix and it was one of those double-sided DVDs with the pilot on one side and a movie called In the Beginning on the other. I didn't know at the time that In the Beginning WASN'T the pilot, so when I put the disc in and it came up I watched it... Then I flipped the disc over and watched the otherside and realized the mistake I
'd made.
So, by this point I've forgotten most of what I saw, and it might be worth trying to revisit it from the actual start, but at the time I thought it was pointless to watch anymore since it was all spoiled for me in the beginning...
In the Beginning mostly spoils arcs from the first season. Some of the future scenes are revealed in the second and third season. It doesn’t spoil as much as it seems because B5 would frequently show the future destinations of certain arcs, leading the audience to believe the story unfolds one way only to show that it played out quite differently.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/07 19:57:50
I had a friend named dennis who was quite religious. I once talked him into watching babylon 5 third space because it was basically a bible story redone as a sf movie. He kind of liked it but didn't get it was the tower of babel until i explained it to him.
"But the universe is a big place, and whatever happens, you will not be missed..."
not going to buy those as a digital medium only but looking forward to a new physical release
for the DVD's there seems to be a big difference in quality for Region 1 and Region 2 (US vs EU), hence why the EU DVD quality was better than the prior streams available on Amazone (similar with Buffy, were the original EU DVD's are still the best quality available), specially if you had a player/TV with good upscaling
Harry, bring this ring to Narnia or the Sith will take the Enterprise
BobtheInquisitor wrote: They both won and got coopted. Shows like Buffy, Firefly, BSG, SG1 became more mainstream, and then the streaming services peeled away the mainstream back into lots of little, more or less creator-driven series.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
bbb wrote: I never really watched much of B5, but when I decided to try to start I rented the pilot from Netflix and it was one of those double-sided DVDs with the pilot on one side and a movie called In the Beginning on the other. I didn't know at the time that In the Beginning WASN'T the pilot, so when I put the disc in and it came up I watched it... Then I flipped the disc over and watched the otherside and realized the mistake I
'd made.
So, by this point I've forgotten most of what I saw, and it might be worth trying to revisit it from the actual start, but at the time I thought it was pointless to watch anymore since it was all spoiled for me in the beginning...
In the Beginning mostly spoils arcs from the first season. Some of the future scenes are revealed in the second and third season. It doesn’t spoil as much as it seems because B5 would frequently show the future destinations of certain arcs, leading the audience to believe the story unfolds one way only to show that it played out quite differently.
That's good to hear. Now I just need to get past the dated CGI.
kodos wrote: not going to buy those as a digital medium only but looking forward to a new physical release
for the DVD's there seems to be a big difference in quality for Region 1 and Region 2 (US vs EU), hence why the EU DVD quality was better than the prior streams available on Amazone (similar with Buffy, were the original EU DVD's are still the best quality available), specially if you had a player/TV with good upscaling
Yeah, there was in one of the embedded links in the article above a reference to having to get PAL interlaced versions of the show and convert them back to NTSC progressive (with a loss of quality) and then soon in for 16:9 cropping (for a further noticeable loss of quality) for the DVD release here.
That's good to hear. Now I just need to get past the dated CGI.
I'm afraid no one can help you with that. Unlike with the TNG blurays, the effects weren't redone but rather AI upscaled. They're noticeably crisper but the baseline detail is the same.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2021/02/08 12:52:04
We Munch for Macragge! FOR THE EMPRUH! Cheesesticks and Humus!
Big Mek Sparkz and his Band of Sparky Ting Huntas: 4,000 points
Our Lady of the Generous Heart: 2,000 points
Thousand Sons: One unbuilt Daemon Prince 
