Babylon 5 now streaming to Amazon Prime members

Discussion in 'Visual Arts' started by Erik Tracy, Jun 5, 2018.

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  1. Erik Tracy

    Erik Tracy Meet me at the Green Dragon for an ale Thread Starter

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
    A tip from another forum.

    B5 now available to Amazon Prime members.

    Confirmed - watching Season 1 Episode 1 now.:righton:
     
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  2. Dubmart

    Dubmart Senior Member

    Location:
    Bristol, England
    I recently finished watching the whole thing for the first time since the 1990s, yeah the effects aren't great, they never were and there are some filler episodes especially in the last season, but overall it was just as good as I remembered and reminded me just how pioneering and great a series it was, such a shame it never continued in some form.
     
  3. Drew

    Drew Senior Member

    Location:
    Grand Junction, CO
    The special effects were created on a Commodore Amiga and a Newtek Video Toaster and Lightwave raytracing software... Kind of innovative for its time. The average episode had more outer space footage as the series went on because of the speed increases of microprocessors and it innovative use of networking for the time.

    I had an Amiga and read about how these hardware/software combination was being used in magazines related to the platform.
     
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  4. I had forgotten how excellent the writing was for the show. It looks really good (except for the CGI footage which is clearly upscaled) if not quite as good as a contemporary show. Until recently I had not heard about Michael O' Hare's battle with mental illness and that was the reason why he left the show. Evidently he suffered increasingly from schizophrenia. J. Michael, who remained a good friend to O'Hare after he left, had offered to hold up shooting so O'Hare could find a medication that would work on him. O'Hare refused because he knew it would put the cast and crew out of work during a crucial time. J. Michael engineered a replacement with and brought back O'Hare to tie off the story arc for Command Sinclair. O'Hare didn't work much after that and his last job was in 1997. He passed in 2012 at the age of sixty. The show had a large part of its primary cast die young--Richard Biggs, Jerry Doyle, Andreas Katsulas, Jeff Conaway.

    I'm glad that Warner paid to have the series upscaled for rebroadcast and created new transfers for the series. It had fallen into obscurity because of the lower resolution quality before and hopefully the series--which pioneered the idea of a series story arc over five years at the time-- will find both newer and the previous fans it had before.
     
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  5. MikeInFla

    MikeInFla Glad to be out of Florida

    Location:
    Kalamazoo, MI
    Cool, I have never seen this show and will be sure to check it out. I've seen bits and pieces of it but never a full episode. Looking forward to discovering B5.
     
  6. pblmow

    pblmow Forum Resident

    Location:
    Fresno.
    1st. DVD series I bought back in the day. Over all I enjoyed this very much.
    I'm sorry to hear about Mr. O'Hare. Do you think this is a good one for Blu-Ray?
     
  7. jtiner

    jtiner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Maine
    When I saw this thread, I wondered about the status of any technical updates/improvements to the series. I knew the show was problematic because of the mix of 16X9 film, 4:3 CG, and SD video recording. However, it appears that at the time, Warner requested that each show be reassembled as broadcast (4:3) on 35mm for archival purposes at the end of each season. So, presumably there's a 4:3 35mm copy of each program with CGI at something better than SD resolution. I'd take that over the DVD versions...
     
  8. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    Whatever reason you choose to hold off watching - this thing is never gonna be state-of-the-art, and you should get past that (and, in my opinion, get over the first season-and-a-half), because once the plot and the big-bad-looming-in-the-shadows really starts to kick-in, it's a nice ride all the way to the end ... uhhh, wherever you determine "the end" to be. ;) Now that it's all done and in the can, today is your best opportunity to start watching the show at your own pace, as opposed to the pace endless re-negotiations put Straczinski and the audience through. This, is the television world, is one of the best definitions of "labor of love" you are likely to find. And, for those of you who don't dig SF, I suggest that somebody should do a mini-series based on the creation (and the triumph) of the show itself; it in and of itself is quite the wild ride.
     
  9. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Could never get past the ultra-cheap sets which looked like something out of a high-school play.

    However, there is one episode that is fantastic and truly well written. The whole episode is an interrogation. Just a confrontation between Sheridan and some unnamed interviewer. Was like something out of The Outer Limits.

    Fantastic bit of TV. Ironically, in spite of the crack about the sets, that episode occurs almost entirely in one room with only a couple of chairs and a table. :D
     
  10. jtiner

    jtiner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Maine
    Agreed; but in reading through all of the JMS tweets (starting May 17th) just now, it sure sounds like something MUCH better than we've ever seen exists as 4:3 35mm negs., so comparatively inexpensive to transfer (as opposed to any effort to re-assemble and re-render in HD). He said Warner asked for the digital assets for each show to be digitally transferred directly to film (conformed to match the broadcast versions) at the end of each season. So, live action, CGI, and composite were all transferred frame by frame to 35mm, and the CGI/composite was transferred at 2k. I have no idea what the actual resolution the CGI/Amiga stuff was though. I suspect it was better than 640X480...
    I also agree it's hard to stop watching once you get started. It's a fantastic show, and the actors/stories are really outstanding. I've got the DVD box sets, but I'd gladly double dip if they released an HD 4:3 version.
     
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  11. Erik Tracy

    Erik Tracy Meet me at the Green Dragon for an ale Thread Starter

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
    Comes The Inquisitor
    S2/E21

    One of several really good episodes.
     
  12. Strat-Mangler

    Strat-Mangler Personal Survival Daily Record-Breaker

    Location:
    Toronto
    Nope.

    This one from season 5 is the brilliant episode I'm referring to.

    Intersections in Real Time - Wikipedia
     
  13. Erik Tracy

    Erik Tracy Meet me at the Green Dragon for an ale Thread Starter

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
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  14. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    So?

    According to Steve, there's whole Beatles albums masters in the vaults at Abbey Road that sound significantly better than everything they've sold us and re-sold us and re-sold us on EP, 45, LP, CD, DVD, downloads, and that little flash-drive-in-the-shape-of-a-granny-smith...yet her we are, clogging page after page of the music forum, deliniating the tiniest difference between the No-Noise on the EMI Pro-Use, and the 4th-generation hiss on a Capitol Love-Songs comp from the 1990s. Despite the knowlege that we could easily get something even better than has been doled-out to us, Christmas-by-Christmas, for the last half-century.

    But I don't see anybody holding their breath-till-they-turn-Blue-Meanie, unless the Ultra-Rare-Caliber Astonishment-Factor is unleashed just as Steve opined it That Magical Day When They Flew The Masters Over. Nope - Record-Store-Day tidbit of the final chord to "Her Magesty" in "original, non-Dexterized, held-up-a-Wollensak-dynamic-mic-hidden-inside-somebody's-Members'-Only-Jacket" Refurbished Fidelity? Sure - just watch the Scruffs line-up for blocks for that one (oh - don't forget your Complimentary, Original, Exclusive, No-Extra-Charge tuxedo button in the shape of the Yellow Submarine - a steal at an only 15-dollar Upcharge!)(waitaminute, I thought it was Complimentary-)(SHUT UP! Oh, and...that belt looks nice on you - there's your compliment. Next-!)

    Just saying, we are not the sort of people to wait for Warners to clean up their film gates for a chance to see what was already a Prerry Damn Good Show in its' current condition. So...why.
     
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  15. jtiner

    jtiner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Maine
    Wow... sorry - didn't mean to push your buttons.
     
  16. Dillydipper

    Dillydipper Space-Age luddite

    Location:
    Central PA
    No offense at all, really...just explaining my equivalence. Sometimes I find being overly thorough the first time, means I don't spend the afternoon carefully crafting re-statements and explanations and the like. Sorry if I come off like a nag.
     
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  17. jriems

    jriems Audio Ojiisan

    Thanks for the heads-up! I have the whole series on DVD, but haven't watched it in years. Loved some of the story arcs in B5.

    I do hope someday we get a "definitive" edition with the visuals in the best possible version that can be.
     
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  18. dougotte

    dougotte Petty, Annoying Dilettante

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    Thanks for the notice. I loved the series when it was first run, but haven't watched it since then. I watched the first episode on Prime last night. After the first few awkward scenes introducing the characters, the plot kicked in and it was wonderful. Although the effects suffer when upscaled, they are still impressive.
     
  19. The show looks much, much better than the DVDs BUT the sequences with visual effects are soft looking due to the limitations of the time and clearly are upscaled from lower Rez. I would buy it because the quality is much I proved. The good news is that it will allow folks to discover the series after it disappeared into limbo with HDs arrival.
     
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  20. Spitfire

    Spitfire Senior Member

    Location:
    Pacific Northwest
    I just watched all the DVDs last year. Great series.
     
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  21. agentalbert

    agentalbert Senior Member

    Location:
    San Antonio, TX
    Awesome! I've only seen S1 years ago on DVD, but always wanted to see more.
     
  22. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    No, I think all they have is the standard-def Digital Betacam NTSC master tapes. The pieces of the show are scattered and WB has no interest in spending the money to redo all the VFX from scratch. They could "in theory" rescan just the live-action film segments in HD and then cut in uprezzed SD from the videotapes, but it'd look like crap. It'd be a technical nightmare.

    The industry was in a weird transition mode in the 1990s, because there was 4-perf 35mm (1.33), 3-perf 35mm (basically 1.78 or 16x9), shows finished in 4x3, shows finished in 16x9 but airing in 4x3 center-extraction, shows finishing in SD only, shows finishing in HD but airing only the SD version... it was crazy for about a 5-year period from the end of the 1990s to the early 2000s. I don't know how many of the shows were shot in 3-perf, since it was mostly shot in Canada, and 3-perf cameras were hard to find outside of LA for some time.
     
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  23. jtiner

    jtiner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Maine
    What you say makes sense, and that's what I'd always heard. However, the fairly recent JMS tweets go into quite a bit of detail regarding how, at the end of each season, everything was re-assembled and transferred to 35mm, exactly as broadcast. He indicates they were required to transfer "all digital assets direct to film, frame by frame". It's in tweets that start on 5/17 when he's discussing the Amazon streaming of B5. He says "that version, with pristine CG and live action, has never seen the light of day". I certainly hope he's correct.
    BTW, what exactly is "Super 35"? JMS indicates that's what the show was shot on. Is that one of the formats you mentioned?
     
  24. mBen989

    mBen989 Senior Member

    Location:
    Scranton, PA
    Super 35 means you shoot using the full width of 35mm film (including the area usually reserved for the soundtrack) then extract the desired aspect ratio (16x9, 1.85, 2.4).
     
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  25. Vidiot

    Vidiot Now in 4K HDR!

    Location:
    Hollywood, USA
    There's Super 35mm (full ap), and then there's Super 35mm 3-perf (full-ap); the latter is 16x9. They couldn't bounce back to 35mm at the end of each season because the technology did not exist in the 1990s to do that. It is possible that they cut the negative selects together, but it would lack all the VFX and composites. I think even the titles were done electronically in standard-def. It's rare that shows cut the selects together, but Sony did that for Seinfeld during the HD remastering process around 2004-2005. This is virtually impossible to do with Super 35mm 3-perf because there's no room for splicing.

    Like I say... this is a complicated business. I think I've worked on 9 or 10 shows that have gone back from film and redid the entire series in HD. In some cases, we did one or two seasons in SD, then switched to HD around 2001-2002, then had to go back and fix the earlier seasons. It gets very messy, particularly when certain film segments go missing. Among the shows I helped remaster were Andy Richter Controls the Universe, That 70s Show, Will & Grace, Singles Table, Oh Baby, and a bunch of others nobody remembers. The hour-long dramas are harder, because there's much more material to deal with. A show like Babylon 5 would be very difficult -- I would bet it'd cost at least $100K-$200K per episode to do it right (which was about what Star Trek: Next Generation cost). Note that Paramount/Viacom lost money on the latter show.
     
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