Babylon 5 now streaming to Amazon Prime members

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

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  1. mBen989

    mBen989 Senior Member

    Location:
    Scranton, PA
    Releasing them on BluRay just as HD streaming was taking off probably wasn't the best idea.
     
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  2. mBen989

    mBen989 Senior Member

    Location:
    Scranton, PA
    I suppose lack of elements is why Farscape was uprezzed for HD but at least they used the PAL masters.
     
  3. jriems

    jriems Audio Ojiisan

    Started watching via Amazon Prime this weekend with my wife who's never seen B5. We're about 4 episodes in, but based on her reaction so far, I don't know if I can keep her interested enough to keep watching with me. She likes Sci-Fi stuff for the most part, but for some reason B5 isn't getting through.

    I totally understand why, of course. B5 takes a good while to hit its stride, and the pilot along with the 1st season doesn't do a lot to help keep you glued to the TV. I'm pretty forgiving and can look past some pretty bad acting, not-to-great writing, and a bit of cheesiness because the GOOD things keep me coming back (Lando, G'Kar, the overall plot/idea), and hold my attention.

    I'm hoping I can keep her watching long enough to start getting invested in a few of the best characters, but it's not looking too good right now!
     
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  4. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Interesting to hear this is a different master than the DVDs. I'm surprised they even did that.
     
  5. agentalbert

    agentalbert Senior Member

    Location:
    San Antonio, TX
    Does that mean these should look better than the DVD's?
     
  6. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    That seems to be what I'm hearing.

    The live action on the DVD's looked great, since they shot the live action with widescreen in mind if memory serves, which we never got to see on TV. It cropped well to 16:9. The problem is the effects were all mastered 4:3, so they had to zoom in on already dodgy old computer graphics to get them into the 16:9 widescreen format, leaving them blurry and pixelated.

    Is Amazon's master widescreen or 4:3? I'm actually hoping for HD 4:3, since the show will look better that way and the uprezzed effects could look halfway decent in HD (especially after the first season or two, where they got noticeably better).
     
  7. dougotte

    dougotte Petty, Annoying Dilettante

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    It's widescreen on Amazon. The live shots look pretty good, and I haven't noticed any framing issues. They seem to have recomposited the titles to fit in the widescreen frame, and they also look pretty good.

    But, the effects shots are very rough and pixelated. And, live shots with effects overlaid are much lower (SD) resolution.
     
  8. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Interesting.
     
  9. Erik Tracy

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

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
    I'm streaming B5 via Amazon Prime thru a Roku on my HD 1080p Pioneer plasma.

    Close ups are good/clean/clear, composite distant shots of people over EFX are "SD blurry", EFX shots only vary, but overall have that soft SD scaled to HD look. I'm not getting pixelation, but I am getting motion judder on the EFX sequences.

    Still, B5 is all about the story line; I'm already into S2E14.
     
  10. jtiner

    jtiner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Maine
    I don't think it is; I'm pretty certain it's the same 16X9 DVD version with cropped/enlarged versions of effects/composite shots.
    If JMS is correct about the creation 4:3 archive masters at the time with conformed film/CGI/composite material transferred to 35mm negs at original resolution, then yes, there may be 4:3 versions with HD live action and near HD effcets/composite shots that could be available for disc/streaming. Of course, someone would have to pay for the transfers, but that'd be much, much, much more realistic than trying to rebuild the show in HD 16:9.
     
  11. agentalbert

    agentalbert Senior Member

    Location:
    San Antonio, TX
    Get Bezos to care about the show, and maybe it could happen. Babylon 5 streaming so shortly after Amazon acquired The Expanse seems to indicate they're trying to cultivate the sci-fi/space opera fans.
     
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  12. dougotte

    dougotte Petty, Annoying Dilettante

    Location:
    Washington, DC
    Prime via AppleTV is only DD2.0 for most content, including B5. Was it original mixed for surround? It would be nice to hear Christopher Franke's gorgeous score in surround.
     
  13. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    According to Wikipedia, it was presented in Dolby Surround.
     
  14. Deesky

    Deesky Forum Resident

    Zathras know!
     
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  15. jtiner

    jtiner Forum Resident

    Location:
    Maine
    Not the one...
     
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  16. Erik Tracy

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

    Location:
    San Diego, CA, USA
    At my last job (engineer in a cubicle farm), some of us would post up funny pictures or notes underneath our nameplates outside our cubicles.

    I actually had a picture of Zathras with the following lines:
    Nobody listen to Zathras.
    Zathras talks to dirt. Sometimes talks to walls, or talks to ceilings. But dirt is closer.
    Zathras have sad life, probably have sad death, but at least there is symmetry.

    Cuz, most of the time that's how it felt in the grind at megacorp. :D
     
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  17. sunspot42

    sunspot42 Forum Resident

    Location:
    San Francisco
    Comet TV in the US is also playing Babylon 5 now, over the air, 7 nights a week at 9:00PM. It's only in 480i but looks OK for one of those low-budget rerun networks. Better than it ever looked on analog TV at my place, anyhow.

    Can't beat free! Comet seems to be available in a surprising number of markets.
     
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