How REALLY Bad are Babylon 5 DVDs?

[CouncilSpectre]

Originally Posted by Jodi

Does this mean that the U.S. season sets were sourced from PAL masters, with the "PAL speed-up" and all?

Don't know about the PAL speed up as I've never seen them myself, but according to John Copeland, they used the PAL masters but converted them. The full story, or the story as John tells it, can be found within this interview:

http://b5scrolls.com/#Screen1_09_1

[wormraper]

I have the set,s they're tough to watch on anything bigger than a tiny 42 inch TV

[AndyB1973]

Brilliant series - one of my all time favourites.

Yes the DVDs are not great but unlikely we will get any better sadly.

Watched them countless times over the years, don't look too bad my 4K OLED but maybe best not look at them too close :-)

[KcMsterpce]

It's funny, because I called my sister on July 5th (we talk about twice a year on the phone) and he mentioned that she started watching B5, and wanted my opinion on it.
I haven't seen it yet. I saw half of season 1 in 2002, then kept the whole series set on my list of Things to Watch for over 14 years.
The issue is that I keep hearing rumors every few years about a potential re-release of the series that might look better - with or without new effects.

Especially that rumor mill in 2010, right when Star Trek was getting all that blu-ray release crap.

Well... I still really want to watch it, and I might finally "give in" and begin the viewing experience some time this year.

Y'all better thank me, though: 9 out of 10 times I watch an older series like this, I am halfway through the series when a studio announces an upcoming release of a newly remastered set!

[Porco Azzurro]

Originally Posted by KcMsterpce

It's funny, because I called my sister on July 5th (we talk about twice a year on the phone) and he mentioned that she started watching B5, and wanted my opinion on it.
I haven't seen it yet. I saw half of season 1 in 2002, then kept the whole series set on my list of Things to Watch for over 14 years.
The issue is that I keep hearing rumors every few years about a potential re-release of the series that might look better - with or without new effects.

Especially that rumor mill in 2010, right when Star Trek was getting all that blu-ray release crap.

Well... I still really want to watch it, and I might finally "give in" and begin the viewing experience some time this year.

Y'all better thank me, though: 9 out of 10 times I watch an older series like this, I am halfway through the series when a studio announces an upcoming release of a newly remastered set!

My advice is don’t wait, watch it as soon as you can. I don’t think an upgrade is coming anytime soon, if ever, and TVs are only getting bigger!

[The_Donster]

I still have my Babylon 5 season sets and advice anyone to pick them up. Especially at a fair price

[CouncilSpectre]

Have to agree - there’s little hope of a HD release, certainly in the short term. I’d just jump on it now. When you do, you’ll wish you’d done it years ago!

[oddbox83]

At least you have a choice for The Gathering if you can play both Region 1 and Region 2 discs.

R1 only gets the SE edition, but the original version is out in R2 land.

[Deciazulado]

It's been awhile since I've watched B5, but when it played on NTSC TV, the CGI SFX had 30 frames per second motion if I'm not mistaken. (They looked more alive, like Oklahoma!). They and the live action were in 4:3 full frame. When the NTSC 16:9 DVDs came out everybody complained about the SFX shots image quality.

Like the article on that says, what happened (except for the Pilot 480i60 x 720 4:3 DVD which looks correct) was, if I'm recalling what I saw on the NTSC DVDs, that in order to make the 16:9 widescreen versions they took the interlaced 480i60 x 720 4:3 1.33 SFX images, letterboxed them to 1.78 and then upscaled the resulting 360i60 x 720 4:3 1.78 letterboxed SFX directly into 480i60 x 720 16:9 1.78 full frame SFX (Which again is what the article with the screenshots says).

The problem with that is that tho the SFX are in 30fps they are segemented into 60interlaced fields on the 4:3 master, and each field (half of the image) of the full image is displaced 1/60th of a second from another. This doesn't matter if you watch it on a interlaced CRT or de-interlaced properly, which you would if you saw the original 4:3 480i60 image output from your DVD player ->to the progressive LCD/OLED whatever. But the problem is by upscaling the interlaced fields before being deinterlaced properly, into another interlaced fields, they create kind of double images of the 360 horizontal lines into 480 horizontal lines which ends up "baked" in the transfer:

Using the simplest example, if you have a single line white star as a point (a pixel) in a black background on the original 4:3 480i60, this line's white pixel would be in one 1/60 field, surrounded by 2 black lines above and below it on the previous (and following) 1/60 fields. Which will look correct on the CRT, or if deinterlaced properly on a progressive TV system, like this:

Our little star surrounded by space, from top to bottom:

line 1 = black
line 2 = black
line 3 = black
line 4 = white (star)
line 5 = black
line 6 = black
line 7 = black

But if you upscale those alternating lines directly into upscaled alternating lines (the case of B5), that single white pixel/line on field 1 and every line of every field is made 1.33x taller (to make the cropped letterboxed 360 lines into full frame 480 lines). So now you have the white pixel be 1.33 taller. So that means one line has the 1.00 white pixel part and another line above it has the 0.33 part (or a line above and a line below have 0.166 and 0.166), which the way lines and pixels work, would be represented by 33% or 16% grey full pixels (as there are not subatomic pixels ) So far so good.

EXCEPT these extra lines with the grey pixels making up the extra 0.33 (or 0.16+0.16) height to make the 4:3 letterboxed image 16:9 full frame are still in the same first interlaced 1/60 field, as they were upscaled interlaced 1/60 field to interlaced 1/60 field directly. Instead of from de-interlacing the 2 fields first ->into 30p frames in 2:2 cadence inside 60p and then interlacing that back to 60i (heads explode I know).

Why is this bad? Because, remember that little star that was one pixel tall in the first 1/60 interlaced field? Well now it's on 2 lines (1 + 0.33 parts) or 3 lines (1 + 0.16 + 0.16 parts) of the first 1/60 interlaced field. And the black lines surrounding it are still in the other 1/60 interlaced field! So when your TV shows this together, this is what happens:

Now our little star is spread vertically, with black space lines intercalated inside it, splitting the star into sections, the star splintered to pieces in space.

From top to bottom:

line 1 = black
line 2 = 0.16 grey (star)
line 3 = black
line 4 = 1.00 white (star)
line 5 = black
line 6 = 0.16 grey (star)
line 7 = black

or

line 1 = black
line 2 = black
line 3 = 1.00 white (star)
line 4 = black
line 5 = 0.33 grey (star)
line 6 = black
line 7 = black

which look like vertical double or triple images instead of single white points or lines (since this looks similar to astigmatism, I call it digital astigmatism) :

b5_1.jpg from the How Babylon 5 Is Transferred To DVD site

If you examine the 16:9 SFX closely you'll see that: vertical double images lines above/below horizontal edges fuzzing up the quality on top of the blowing up from 360 to 480 upscaling, which shouldn't, by itself, be so bad.

Of course the way to fix this would be to get the 4:3 480i60 NTSC Masters, deinterlace the SFX properly into 30p 2:2 cadence inside a 4:3 480p60 master then letterbox and crop that (into 360p60) and then upscale that to 16:9 480p60 (or nowadays you could 1080p60 or 2160p60) and if you make a DVD you interlace the 60p SFX back to 16:9 480i60 so you can edit them in into the 16:9 480i60 live action 3:2 segments on the DVD master (You have to do it 60iDVD to preserve both the 24fps of the live action and the 30fps of the SFX).

You can do an example of this from the Pilot's 4:3 DVD. The resulting SFX quality is still jaggy cus it's sharp 360p CGI but it ain't astigmatized like above.

I think some people have looked for/recorded the 4:3 broadcasts, VHS or Laserdiscs but in the end those would be 480i60 x 444 (broadcast) or 480i60 x 320 (VHS) or 480i60 x 560 (Laserdisc) analog video quality at best to have as a source for this so it's probably moot to go that route vs trying to reverse engineer it properly from the NTSC DVDs and of course B5 being galactically long, a big undertaking.

Alas not all is lost, if you want a quick fix "look into this" there's a decitrick but the compromise is you will get that PAL downscaled* into NTSC live action sections, downgraded to 360.
Tell your DVD player you have a 4:3 TV instead of 16:9 then watch on a CRT or if on a modern LCD/OLED, watch the letterboxed 4:3 480i60 output with a great deinterlacer (one that properly deinterlaces video and 30p inside 60i 2:2 cadence) be the player's or the TV. That might make some of the SFX astigmatism be lessened and maybe more tolerable.
Convoluted, I know.


*PAL source spoilery note:

[Show spoiler]Now on the other article they talk they used the 16:9 576i50 PAL masters to make the DVDs

In fact the filmed 16x9 versions - Warners had even forgotten that they had those. They used PAL versions and converted them to NTSC for the US market.

Seems to me they're talking about the live action parts, as (again if I recall correctly) the NTSC 16:9 DVD SFX were in 30/60 (can't check them right now they're behind a literal ton of sealed boxes) so at least on the NTSC DVDs the SFX should not be from the PAL, but as as per above.

I haven't seen the PAL DVDs but the 30fps SFX there would have to be (on top of all that letterbox/intelace jazz) standards converted from 60i to 50i, OR slowed down from 30 to 25fps. So imagine if that went back and was converted to NTSC. 10 millions worse. I've always thought I should buy one of them B5 PAL DVDs to check throughly the SFX there but never got 'round to it)

[oddbox83]

Modern TVs do a better job at scaling than that so called professional setup they used for the DVDs.

Even if a new HD version did the same and upscaled the effects, at least the chances are it would look better now. Still soft, but not so rough and jagged (unless they did something silly and upscaled from the 16:9 versions). And hopefully not being so cheap, and rebuilding clips properly from the live action for the "previously on" sections on episodes like War Without End. I would of course love the whole thing re-rendered, tastefully so so it matches the original intent and doesn't go all bells and whistles.

The fans have been doing it how it should be done.

Blender test - Babylon 5 CGI Remaster - YouTube

BTW, I really love the opening of The Lost Tales. Takes me right back in memory to the first time I was Sleeping in Light and had tears streaming down my face at the end. Then the G'Kar dialogue comes along and reminds us who is no longer with us in real life. Wow. Beautiful stuff. I love Lost tales, very underrated. I think people were expecting too much, these are just little low budget tales slotting into some of the gaps. I'm gutted the follow up was cancelled, we lost what would have been in hindsight Jerry Doyle's swansong in Babylon 5. The Babylon 5 curse - so many of the cast have left us far, far too early.

Babylon 5 Lost Tales Intro - YouTube

[VictoryAtNight]

Originally Posted by Deciazulado

It's been awhile since I've watched B5, but when it played on NTSC TV, the CGI SFX had 30 frames per second motion if I'm not mistaken. (They looked more alive, like Oklahoma!). They and the live action were in 4:3 full frame. When the NTSC 16:9 DVDs came out everybody complained about the SFX shots image quality.

Like the article on that says, what happened (except for the Pilot 480i60 x 720 4:3 DVD which looks correct) was, if I'm recalling what I saw on the NTSC DVDs, that in order to make the 16:9 widescreen versions they took the interlaced 480i60 x 720 4:3 1.33 SFX images, letterboxed them to 1.78 and then upscaled the resulting 360i60 x 720 4:3 1.78 letterboxed SFX directly into 480i60 x 720 16:9 1.78 full frame SFX (Which again is what the article with the screenshots says).

The problem with that is that tho the SFX are in 30fps they are segemented into 60interlaced fields on the 4:3 master, and each field (half of the image) of the full image is displaced 1/60th of a second from another. This doesn't matter if you watch it on a interlaced CRT or de-interlaced properly, which you would if you saw the original 4:3 480i60 image output from your DVD player ->to the progressive LCD/OLED whatever. But the problem is by upscaling the interlaced fields before being deinterlaced properly, into another interlaced fields, they create kind of double images of the 360 horizontal lines into 480 horizontal lines which ends up "baked" in the transfer:

Using the simplest example, if you have a single line white star as a point (a pixel) in a black background on the original 4:3 480i60, this line's white pixel would be in one 1/60 field, surrounded by 2 black lines above and below it on the previous (and following) 1/60 fields. Which will look correct on the CRT, or if deinterlaced properly on a progressive TV system, like this:

Our little star surrounded by space, from top to bottom:

line 1 = black
line 2 = black
line 3 = black
line 4 = white (star)
line 5 = black
line 6 = black
line 7 = black

[Show spoiler]But if you upscale those alternating lines directly into upscaled alternating lines (the case of B5), that single white pixel/line on field 1 and every line of every field is made 1.33x taller (to make the cropped letterboxed 360 lines into full frame 480 lines). So now you have the white pixel be 1.33 taller. So that means one line has the 1.00 white pixel part and another line above it has the 0.33 part (or a line above and a line below have 0.166 and 0.166), which the way lines and pixels work, would be represented by 33% or 16% grey full pixels (as there are not subatomic pixels ) So far so good.

EXCEPT these extra lines with the grey pixels making up the extra 0.33 (or 0.16+0.16) height to make the 4:3 letterboxed image 16:9 full frame are still in the same first interlaced 1/60 field, as they were upscaled interlaced 1/60 field to interlaced 1/60 field directly. Instead of from de-interlacing the 2 fields first ->into 30p frames in 2:2 cadence inside 60p and then interlacing that back to 60i (heads explode I know).

Why is this bad? Because, remember that little star that was one pixel tall in the first 1/60 interlaced field? Well now it's on 2 lines (1 + 0.33 parts) or 3 lines (1 + 0.16 + 0.16 parts) of the first 1/60 interlaced field. And the black lines surrounding it are still in the other 1/60 interlaced field! So when your TV shows this together, this is what happens:

Now our little star is spread vertically, with black space lines intercalated inside it, splitting the star into sections, the star splintered to pieces in space.

From top to bottom:

line 1 = black
line 2 = 0.16 grey (star)
line 3 = black
line 4 = 1.00 white (star)
line 5 = black
line 6 = 0.16 grey (star)
line 7 = black

or

line 1 = black
line 2 = black
line 3 = 1.00 white (star)
line 4 = black
line 5 = 0.33 grey (star)
line 6 = black
line 7 = black

which look like vertical double or triple images instead of single white points or lines (since this looks similar to astigmatism, I call it digital astigmatism) :

Attachment 204009 from the How Babylon 5 Is Transferred To DVD site

If you examine the 16:9 SFX closely you'll see that: vertical double images lines above/below horizontal edges fuzzing up the quality on top of the blowing up from 360 to 480 upscaling, which shouldn't, by itself, be so bad.

Of course the way to fix this would be to get the 4:3 480i60 NTSC Masters, deinterlace the SFX properly into 30p 2:2 cadence inside a 4:3 480p60 master then letterbox and crop that (into 360p60) and then upscale that to 16:9 480p60 (or nowadays you could 1080p60 or 2160p60) and if you make a DVD you interlace the 60p SFX back to 16:9 480i60 so you can edit them in into the 16:9 480i60 live action 3:2 segments on the DVD master (You have to do it 60iDVD to preserve both the 24fps of the live action and the 30fps of the SFX).

You can do an example of this from the Pilot's 4:3 DVD. The resulting SFX quality is still jaggy cus it's sharp 360p CGI but it ain't astigmatized like above.

I think some people have looked for/recorded the 4:3 broadcasts, VHS or Laserdiscs but in the end those would be 480i60 x 444 (broadcast) or 480i60 x 320 (VHS) or 480i60 x 560 (Laserdisc) analog video quality at best to have as a source for this so it's probably moot to go that route vs trying to reverse engineer it properly from the NTSC DVDs and of course B5 being galactically long, a big undertaking.

Alas not all is lost, if you want a quick fix "look into this" there's a decitrick but the compromise is you will get that PAL downscaled* into NTSC live action sections, downgraded to 360.
Tell your DVD player you have a 4:3 TV instead of 16:9 then watch on a CRT or if on a modern LCD/OLED, watch the letterboxed 4:3 480i60 output with a great deinterlacer (one that properly deinterlaces video and 30p inside 60i 2:2 cadence) be the player's or the TV. That might make some of the SFX astigmatism be lessened and maybe more tolerable.
Convoluted, I know.

*PAL source spoilery note:

[Show spoiler]Now on the other article they talk they used the 16:9 576i50 PAL masters to make the DVDs Seems to me they're talking about the live action parts, as (again if I recall correctly) the NTSC 16:9 DVD SFX were in 30/60 (can't check them right now they're behind a literal ton of sealed boxes) so at least on the NTSC DVDs the SFX should not be from the PAL, but as as per above.

I haven't seen the PAL DVDs but the 30fps SFX there would have to be (on top of all that letterbox/intelace jazz) standards converted from 60i to 50i, OR slowed down from 30 to 25fps. So imagine if that went back and was converted to NTSC. 10 millions worse. I've always thought I should buy one of them B5 PAL DVDs to check throughly the SFX there but never got 'round to it)

[AnamorphicWidescreen]

Good thread. I wanted to post here for two reasons: To discuss the B5 DVD's, and also to discuss the show itself - I'm on the 5th season now, and find the show amazing.

Technical review of the DVD's:

To address the special effects on the DVD's - yes, for the most part they look fairly sub-par - especially in the early seasons. Very obvious CGI, like a '90's video game. This is the only aspect of this show I don't like, but it's also extremely understandable - given that this was a '90's sci-fi TV series, and was limited by the special effects of the time. Going along with this, the obvious CGI effects are the main reason I don't really mind if this show never hits Blu - i.e., if it ever does they won't improve these effects, and the sub-par aspect of these will be a lot more obvious & pronounced in HD, rather than improved.

My review of Babylon 5 Season 1 re: the storyline/characters:

I am extremely impressed by this series! Amazing!! Very intelligent, well-written, & well-acted sci-fi show set in a fully realized futuristic universe with detailed histories & interesting back-stories for many of the characters, etc. The prosthetics/make-up for the aliens are excellent, and the exterior space CGI effects, though far from great, are not horrible.

I find this show far superior to most other sci-fi TV shows, including most of the incarnations of Star Trek I've seen & which the show is unfairly compared to. It was much better than ST: Deep Space Nine - hands down. In fact, this series is probably one of my top ten TV shows of all time - and that's saying a lot, since I've seen A LOT of TV shows over the years. And, just based on this 1st season, I can honestly say that there were 0 weak or sub-par episodes. All of them were strong & well-done. It's rare that this happens, especially with sci-fi series.

Some comments on the first season:

-All of the actors have great chemistry together; you can really believe that they're friends & have a lot of respect for each other - especially Ivanova/Captain Sinclar/Garbaldi.

-The show boldly addresses a lot of social issues that continue to be important today, all in a sci-fi setting, i.e.: Parents who don't want to medically treat their dying/sick children because of their religious beliefs; the rights of workers to earn a living wage & operate under safe conditions; appropriate punishment(s) for dangerous criminals; alcoholism; post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD); etc.

-B5 features two of the most gorgeous, stunning actresses I've ever seen in film or TV, i.e. Claudia Christian as Ivanova & Andrea Thompson as Talia Winters. CC was especially impressive in her portrayal as Ivanova; tough/no-nonsense & also very feminine. And, AT as Winters was incredible - sultry, with an amazing voice. Also, I liked how neither woman ever took any crap from anyone

-The episode involving Ivanova mourning the death of her father was extremely touching/moving. It was also interesting to see the character being emotionally vulnerable here, given that we didn't see her express much emotion (other than anger - LOL) in other episodes.

-Londo Mollari is great comic relief on the show, but is definitely not a clown or fool. I like how he is always pretending to be friends with the other characters, but it's soon obvious that - in most cases - he only want their "friendship" in order to get something from them - which typically involves having them inadvertently buying his drinks/paying for his food, trying to get Captain Sinclair to do special favors for him, etc. What an obvious scam-artist

-The sub-plot involving Captain Sinclair having been tortured/brain-washed by the Minbari years before is creepy & disturbing. This plot-line is obviously revisited in later seasons.

-Interesting that some of the guest stars on the show include Walter Koenig (Chekov on ST: TOS) and Bill Mumy (from the original Lost in Space series) as Lenier; their inclusion was a nice homage to these older, well-known sci-fi franchises.

-Going along with the above, being a big fan of TV/movies, it's cool to see this show has so many recognizable guest stars, i.e. David Warner, Mary Woronov (who I wasn't aware played an alien character until after seeing the episode she was in; I'm a huge fan of the '80's cult films Eating Raoul & Night of the Comet, and haven't seen Woronov in much else), and many others. Also, in many cases, I recognize an actor/actress on the show, but can't quite place their name or where I've seen them before...

-It's sad that S01 was the only season featuring Michael O'Hare (Commander Sinclair), who had to leave the show due to health issues.

[CouncilSpectre]

Well, not quite O'Hare's final episode.....

I was glad of the change at the time, especially as Boxleitner was everything that O'Hare wasn't in terms of charisma. However, in recent years, and on more recent viewings, I've come to appreciate O'Hare a lot more. O'Hare's style is often described as wooden, and dour, however I heard similar accusations levelled at Avery Brooks for his portrayal of Sisko in DS9 - IMO, it's just the way their characters are - they're somber individuals, racked with guilt and responsibility.

[88mph]

B5 is supposedly available in 4:3 ratio on Vudu. Can anyone check if they have a preview or something? I can't even access the site being in UK and all.

[mikesncc1701]

I think one of my favorite aspects of this show was the changing of themes each season. Each one fit perfectly for what was going on in the series at the time.

[Lazarus Dark]

Its sad that B5 is one of the few things still stuck in dvd in my collection (the only other things being early Futurama, a few anime's, and maybe 3 or 4 films, heck I've got about one sixth of my collection already converted to UHD even).

There's no magic fix for B5, but my best recommendation is the same as any time I am forced to watch a dvd. Hook up a pc to the tv, if you don't have one already. Use VLC, or perhaps a few other players, that allow you to select an upscale of 2x, meaning instead of trying to upscale to 1080p, it upscales a simple quadrupling of pixels to 960p. I find in all cases, this looks far better, and you get used to the black border quickly. I've always lamented that they didn't choose 960p as HD resolution instead of 1080 (though it would not have helped PAL countries). dvd's also look way better on my plasma than similar sized lcd screens, if thats an option for you.

[88mph]

Where is that upscale option in VLC?

[brps3]

There are no plans now or in the future to put B5 on blue ray. What a shame. But I did watch it while using my PS3 hooked up to my 4k tv. In some ways it looks better but in other ways you can really tell the CGI from the rest.

[scarpad]

B5 is available on Amazon Prime, and starting in Sept will be available in Prime time on the Comet Subchannel and App, along with nightly doses of Space 1999 back in primetime since i was 15 !

[CouncilSpectre]

Originally Posted by scarpad

B5 is available on Amazon Prime, and starting in Sept will be available in Prime time on the Comet Subchannel and App, along with nightly doses of Space 1999 back in primetime since i was 15 !

It's probably a safe bet that AMZ haven't taken Joe up on his offer to look into the alternative prints for them. His mistake was just throwing it out on Twitter - should have gone to Jeff Bezos direct - he's a huge sci-fi fan, it could easily have happened.