[Lex]

Guys,

Just bought seasons 2-4 of Babylon 5 on DVD Region 2 (£16 each from choices ) and was quite shocked by the poor quality... started watching series 2 last night and couldn't believe how grainy it was, there was also lots of dirt and artifacts on the screen as if it had been copied from an old tape Also they are presented in 16:9 but is it my imagination or have they been simply cropped at top and bottom? Definitely the title sequence has been cropped and zoomed. I guess this would partly account for the poor quality of the image

I have looked on various region comparison sites and there is no mention of R1 being any better, so are they all like this?

I wasn't expecting them to be brilliant quality, but I never would have imagined that they could be this bad! Typical Warner Bros I suppose!

[Indiana Jones]

The CGI shots were originally created in 4:3 but the show was filmed in widescreen so when they released the DVDs they cropped the 4:3 CGI to get a 16:9 image, this is the same on all regions and in Season 1 on a particular episode they forgot to crop and instead stretched the shots which contained CGI so everything looked short and fat, I believe this error has since been corrected but I still have the faulty disc and cant get Warner to replace it.

[Battle]

For 16 quid each, who cares - im just glad i didnt pay full price for them - now ive just got to wait till season 5 comes down in price, and hopefully for a Region 2 complete movie collection with all 5 movies on it, not just the three we get now, otherwise ill have to get the region 1 set which has all five.

the region 1 movies collection isn't region 1 encoded and worked on my region 2 player before I got it multi regional!

btw season 5 R2 has problems with 2 episodes, sorry i havent go time to search for you but there's info on this site search babylon 5 season 5 for more info.

[probedb]

It is a pity they didn't spend the money and redo the FX shots as it would've been so much nicer.

The R1 boxes are nicer as they have nice shiny stuff on them

[Battle]

Originally Posted by west

the region 1 movies collection isn't region 1 encoded and worked on my region 2 player before I got it multi regional!

Thanks for that - i see a spending spree coming on !!!

[laser]

The transfers are badly damaged, well for Season 1 anyway. Have not watched Season 2 yet. The 5.1 soundtrack is pretty limited and doesn't really add that many directional sounds. It'sd pretty difficult to tell the difference when listening in 5.1 or Dolby Pro Logic II.

I started to buy B5 NTSC laserdiscs back in 1997/8. Warner decided to release the laserdiscs going forward from Season 1 and backwards from Season 5, simultanously.

If their infinite wisdom and DVD's rise they never got round to releasing half of Season 3 and Season 4.

How ****** off was I........
It was another 6 years before the whole series was available on DVD.

[Lex]

Originally Posted by laser

The transfers are badly damaged, well for Season 1 anyway. Have not watched Season 2 yet. The 5.1 soundtrack is pretty limited and doesn't really add that many directional sounds. It'sd pretty difficult to tell the difference when listening in 5.1 or Dolby Pro Logic II.

Yeah completely agree. I sat there for ages messing with the volume levels trying to get some life out of it but it was pretty futile.
The picture quality of seasons three and four are at least better than one and two, but by no means perfect.

[zantarous]

Originally Posted by pinkprobegt

It is a pity they didn't spend the money and redo the FX shots as it would've been so much nicer.

That was the original intention from JMS he really wanted to future proof B5 for the HD era and thought that when they did the HD transfer in future they would be able to use the original CGI files and redo them in 16x9 this allowed them to save money when originally producing the show as it was it was done on a very small budget compared to the likes of Star Trek.

However all the B5 stuff is the property of WB who stored the files and would not let Babylonian Productions inc do the archiving, but due to a clean out at some point in the last few years someone disposed of the said files which left them with no alternative but to crop the 4:3 images.

No I don’t know (and we probably will never know) if this is the truth by WB or if they simply didn’t want to put up the extra money to re-render but I remember reading on jmsnews.com that he wasn’t very happy when this came to light. B5 has always been a bit of non entity for WB even though the DVD’s have grossed over half a billion dollars for them.

As for the image on S2 some of the early episodes are quite badly damaged but they still look a lot better then the reruns on TV, the worst thing for me is that while some scenes look really stunning for such an old show but some of it looks horrid and grainy, the effect shots do get better as the shows goes on and the CGI really looks good in season three onwards, I still find Severed Dreams stunning to watch. But at the end of the day most B5 fans will tell you that the story arc is the real star of the show and I am just glad that it made it to DVD in tact.

But at the end of the day most B5 fans will tell you that the story arc is the real star of the show and I am just glad that it made it to DVD in tact.

That's so true & me too!


I own s1-4 on R2 & s5 R1. I found the picture quality on s1 bad , s2 better but not good s3 & s4 good/ok but my s5 is as bad if not worse than s1. I don't know if it's cause it's region 1 but i was so surprised after ther previous 2 seasons improvements.

anyway at least I've got the whole story on DVD and be grateful it got a half decent release, considering.

The 5.1 soundtrack is pretty limited and doesn't really add that many directional sounds. It'sd pretty difficult to tell the difference when listening in 5.1 or Dolby Pro Logic II.

I've never compared but considering the age of the show & newer Tv DVDs with weaker DD2.0 the 5.1 soundtracks are quite reasonable, pity it doesn't match Farscape though which are damned impressive for TV DVDs!

Thanks for that - i see a spending spree coming on !!!

you're welcome.