Babylon 5 on blu-ray?

[davidthenikonuser]

I guess there is no word on this great show getting a blu-ray release?

I've been watching my DVD's of this show and for the most part DVDs look good except the FX shots are in direr need of HD upgrade. Seems when they remastered the show for DVD that they had to uprezzed the FX shots because they look like PS1 video game graphics (all jaggy and pixelated), but the shots with the actors look nice and sharp.

Anyway, would love to see this show get the Star Trek treatment. I and many others I sure would help with a kickstarter program.

[Mr.Terry]

That would be excellent.I have it on DVD and BD would be much appreciated.So that's 2 of us

[chip75]

I'm not sure what they'll do if they can't find the pilot on suitable elements, if I remember the storage facility flooded and then rats ate it ... the showrunner said it would costs $900,000 to do new effects (per episode) so it may be just too expensive!

[AintNoSin]

Originally Posted by chip75

I'm not sure what they'll do if they can't find the pilot on suitable elements, if I remember the storage facility flooded and then rats ate it ... the showrunner said it would costs $900,000 to do new effects (per episode) so it may be just too expensive!

It's not just that. The CG models for the original FX were lost/deleted. They would literally have to start from scratch. I would like to see it, though. The FX shots on the original DVD were cropped from 4:3 to 16:9, so I'd love to see them redone at full 16:9.

[davidthenikonuser]

Originally Posted by chip75

I'm not sure what they'll do if they can't find the pilot on suitable elements, if I remember the storage facility flooded and then rats ate it ... the showrunner said it would costs $900,000 to do new effects (per episode) so it may be just too expensive!

$900,000 per episode seem high to me. I would think $900,000 per season.

Wasn't lots of the FX of the Station and ships re-cycled from episode to episode?

Anyway, would be cool if it happened.

[chip75]

Originally Posted by davidthenikonuser

$900,000 per episode seem high to me. I would think $900,000 per season.

Not knowing the plans for new SFX, I'm pretty the quote was per episode. Whether that's an average or not I don't know, as you said a lot of shots were repeated and some episodes were full of CGI.

I'd imagine each episode cost between 1-2 million dollars back during production. Voyager was over a million an episode if I recall. It would probably be cheaper if they took over an FX company for 6 months than paying it shot-for-shot. I'm sure they'll look at all the options if the project ever gets off the ground.

[wormraper]

I would kill to see this re-rendered for HD.. the dvds look like crap even on a 42 inch Plasma, yet alone modern HD displays

[kemcha]

I came across an article about Babylon 5 being released on Blu-ray and it looks like Warner Brothers is starting to consider it.

George Feltenstein, Senior Vice-President for Theatrical Catalogue Marketing at Warner Brothers (translation: he's one of the guys in charge of the DVD and Blu-Ray department) has recently confirmed that the company are actively looking into the possibility of re-releasing Babylon 5 on Blu-Ray. Feltenstein acknowledged that this would be expensive and possibly impractical, but that the B5 fanbase is large enough to warrant making the effort.

Like most US TV shows of the time, Babylon 5 was recorded on film but mastered - having special effects, music and sound effects added - on video tape. Video tape cannot be upscaled to high-definition resolution, preventing the show from being upscaled as-is and released on Blu-Ray. Instead, the only way to upscale the entire show is to go back to the original film elements, extract a HD image and then re-edit each episode from scratch. Whilst the original audio tracks can be re-used, the special effects would also all have to be remade from scratch and edited back in. In the case of Babylon 5, which sometimes had 100 CGI shots per episode, this would be extremely expensive and time-consuming.

The viability of this plan would depend on the original film stock having been stored in good conditions. According to rumour, the Babylon 5 pilot episode's film has been damaged in storage, initially by flooding and later by rats getting into the facility. The status of the rest of the show is not known. If it has all been stored, then upgrading the show's live action scenes to HD will be relatively quick and easy. More complex are the CGI scenes and composite scenes (scenes mixing live action and CGI, including every time a PPG weapon is fired), which would need to be completely redone from scratch. The cost of this may be too much to be practical. Still, it's encouraging to know that WB are at least looking into the matter.

http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2013...hd-update.html

[rdodolak]

Originally Posted by kemcha

I came across an article about Babylon 5 being released on Blu-ray and it looks like Warner Brothers is starting to consider it.

http://thewertzone.blogspot.com/2013...hd-update.html

This is very promising news indeed and I'd buy all five seasons if released properly. What's even better is the following news:

The Blu-Ray re-releases have been extremely successful and wildly acclaimed, and some of the same personnel are now allegedly working on a similar Blu-Ray re-release for The X-Files for next year, whilst the ST:TNG team is rumoured to be moving straight onto Deep Space Nine (which has many more CGI shots) once TNG is completed early next year.

[Linds111986]

I really do hope they release Babylon 5 on Blu-ray. I would definitely buy it; its one of my favorite shows.

[supamario]

Babylon 5 on Blu-ray! Yes, please!!

[AintNoSin]

There are just too many hurdles for this to be a realistic probability.

All of the FX shots (including composites) were rendered at 4:3 SD quality. For the DVDs, all of the FX shots were cropped to 16:9, losing even more quality.

Redoing all of the FX shots is going to be hard because the files for all the 3D computer models were deleted and there were no backups.

Every frame of the original film would have to be rescanned at least at 1080p. There would have to recreate every computer model and redo every FX shot on the show.

I know that's kind of what ST:TNG did, but that's TNG, which was vastly more popular even than other Star Trek shows except for the original. Their BDs would have to be insanely profitable for anyone to think a smaller show like B5 would be worth that much expense and effort.

I don't think the TNG BDs were insanely profitable.