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Comment by dmpk2k | Hacker News Reader

Similar with Babylon 5, although the CG has not aged as well.

The Babylon 5 team had tried to prepare for that as well by keeping digital masters of all the effects. It would have meant recompositing, which isn't necessarily cheap, but in theory they could have run the exact same effects at a higher resolution.

Unfortunately, Warner Brothers lost those files. Rumor has it when they sent copies to Sierra (really Vivendi at the time, just before the Activision acquisition) for a Babylon 5 videogame the WB Archives team accidentally sent their only copy and that when the videogame project was shutdown they destroyed the copies per the IP license agreement.

There's a high probability that even if WB had had the digital masters of the effects, they probably still would have stuck to the 4:3 restoration over the 16:9 restoration to avoid recompositing costs, but it's still such a weird swing of bad luck that the production team thought ahead about HD technology well enough as well as anyone could at that time and yet the 4K copy we have in this timeline is in the wrong aspect ratio.

I don't know, currently watching Babylon 5 Season 3 and I think the CG is pretty impressive. It's not high resolution or sharp, but the ray tracing is excellent. A lot of moving parts flying around everywhere with lighting and planets in the background.

What he's talking about is that the CGI in B5 was filmed in 4:3 and not in 16:9 like the rest of the show. When they did the "high res" releases they had to make the choice of doing everything in 16:9 or in 4:3.

In 4:3 it looks good and like the original airing show, in 16:9 any non-digital/composite shot looks freaking fantastic. But once you get to any digital or composite shot it takes a nose dive in quality.

There was recent (last few years) work done to fix all of this.

https://www.modeemi.fi/~leopold/Babylon5/DVD/DVDTransfer.htm...

I have these versions, and it's world better than everything beforehand. It's also a good opportunity for a re-watch!

A very well written show. It's crazy to think a lot of people don't even get to watch this, because it's so hard to find. I couldn't find it anywhere (except for DVD's) so I had to resort to torrents.

There's a 4K 4:3 remaster streaming on HBO Max. It wasn't exactly well advertised (certainly not to the extent that it has been hard to miss this Mad Men advertising), but it exists and is a good way to watch the show. Feels a bit less cinematic not being in 16:9, but it looks good other than that because the show was shot to be 4:3 safe (as that was still the most common TV at the time).

Also a US only thing. Torrents keeping the rest of us alive.

I loved B5's story, but no remaster is going to fix the cheeseball acting of the show. It felt 200 years old even when it was airing. (Sigh, I'm probably still going to rewatch it...)

I think Garibaldi was actually quite good.

Sheridan was maybe a bit cheesy at times but definitely gave off that vibe of a leader one could follow into battle.

It's streaming, for free, on Tubi

Not available outside the US, I think. Torrents are then just more convenient.

United States, Canada, Mexico, Australia, United Kingdom. Parts of Latin America: Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Panama, Puerto Rico.

If you want to pirate it, with yt-dlp and the URL, you can download items from the Tubi web site. (Don't ask me how I know.)

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