Bad news for Babylon 5 fans? (1 Viewer)

[Steve Tack]

On DVDFILE's "Studio Day 2001" Warner report ( http://www.dvdfile.com/news/special_report/events/studio_day/2001/warner.html
I hope that just means that they are going to wait and see how well the first disc sells!

 

[Michael Sliger]

All I can say is that if I don't make it to the Warner chat tommorrow, I hope someone else will ask them to clarify this situation. If In The Beginning/The Gathering is a test release for the rest of the series, I hope that they would be upfront with that plan. Asking for them to promote the disk to make the "test" valid is also on my comment list.

 

[todd s]

I can tell them why sales for the vhs were poor. They told people that B5 was probably coming to dvd. I had purchased the first couple of tapes from Columbia House, but cancelled them when I heard.
How much work needs to go into them. They were redone for the scifi channel airings.

 

[Michael St. Clair]

there is extensive work that would need to be done on this series to release it on DVD in the manner that would attract fans to purchase them.

Might this mean that the effects would need to be re-rendered and composited to make them acceptable for anamorphic 480p display?

 

[Graham Perks]

Yep, ditto. I didn't buy the VHS because I'm waiting for the DVDs (still). With luck sales of the single B5 DVD we're getting for Christmas will help them realize their misunderstanding

 

[John Berggren]

I really don't understand... if Warners ever send reps to read this forum, B5 comes up very frequently, with many responders. I think it would be foolish to use VHS to gauge ANY DVD release.
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[Sarah S]

Sometimes I wonder if the head of marketing recently got a lobotomy or something. "Let's release Willy Wonka fullscreen only 'cause my SO hates those nasty black bars!" "Let's release some episodes of a sequential show from various seasons! No one will notice! The fans are complaining? We'll just tell them to wait for the full season sets on laserdisc...I mean dvd!" "The vhs didn't do to well. Well, the fans were a niche market anyway. I know! We'll release the beginning episodes, promote it by word of mouth (which will save us money) and leave the rest of the series in limbo!"
It really makes me wonder who, exactly, is in charge of marketing there & why aren't they answerable to somebody.

 

[Walter Kittel]

I posted a thread over in Studio Feedback about this. I still can't frickin' believe it. After all this waiting, and now this. ARRGGHHH!!!
If the first DVD is a test disc, then I sincerely hope that Warner Bros. makes this known. As it stands; I'm so upset about this that I currently have no plans on purchasing this disc. If Warner can't commit to the fans of the show, then why should we purchase this token effort in the vague hope that future episodes are forthcoming? The notion that this one paltry offering is all that might eventually surface on DVD makes me ill. I sincerely hope that this is addressed in the upcoming chat.
Unfortunately, given their track record with South Park I'm less than optimistic about season sets of Babylon 5. This just flat out SUCKS!!!
- Walter.

 

[Teresa]

I must say that this news is the most disappointing on the home video front EVER for me. I wanted B5 in the best format possible since it first aired. But since I didn't have a laser disc player (and couldn't afford one - poor college student) I figured I'd wait for the next format. I just *knew* those techie geniuses would find a way to make a whole movie fit on one disc without me having to flip it over. And when they did come up with such a beast (and I could afford it ), I bought it - my beloved dvd player. I knew that someday (hopefully soon) Warner would release B5 on dvd in all its widescreen glory, so there was absolutely NO reason for me to buy the overpriced columbia house vhs tapes. Too expensive, take up too much space, and most of all - inferior format.
Then I heard about the 12/4 release and celebrated. I thought the day had finally come when Warner would release my wonderful B5 onto dvd in season order, even if not in the preferred season sets. And now I find out that no, this is not the beginning of a wonderful dvd buying spree to get all B5 in my anxious hands, it is the only shot. Bad form, Warner. I'm vastly disappointed and truly shocked at the ignorance in basing dvd sales on vhs sales. Especially when the vhs sales were through COLUMBIA HOUSE. Please. Talk about overpriced and unwanted. Just look at how many B5 fans frequent forums like this and go to a convention or two, and you'll see how many people are eager to buy this series on dvd.
Babylon 5, Star Wars, Indiana Jones and Back to the Future were all expected to be among the first properties released on dvd, and are still the most widely anticipated since NONE have yet been released on dvd. Looks like I'll be disappointed again. I sincerely hope this decision is reversed.
[Edited last by Teresa on October 02, 2001 at 01:30 AM]

 

[TheoGB]

What's the UK situation? We've already had everything once on VHS but going by Friends I guess they might give it to us.
However, from the sounds of what Warner have to do I'd guess we're going to get fullscreen rough transfers if we do.

Theo

 

[Frank Anderson]

I hope someone brings this up during the chat. Unfortunately I will not be there to do so myself.

Frank
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[Nigel McN]

I think Warner forget that companies outside the US seem to be quite alright selling scifi on VHS so why can't they do it? I know someone who has all TNG, DS9, VOY, B5, CRUSADE on prerecorded VHS, me I am waiting for all those on DVD,...
we need to ask Warner a question like "Can you give us a real reason for all the delay of B5, not the old line about no one buying VHS after the dvds were anounced"

 

[David Stucky]

I keep hearing it over and over coming from the hole in my mind.
"It is too late for the pebbles to vote the avalanche has already started." -- E'xecutive-Kosh
I am a Babylon 5 fan. I have always been here. I will be here when this all ends. Even if I have to go against the will of the Universe, I will follow the Evil-Koshs of this world in fire, with hard $cash$ in hand. I will pay $500 a seaon, if I have to. I will have Babylon 5.
We will have Babylon 5. The Excutive-Koshs' votes are not strong enough to stop the will of the Universe, little alone the avalanche that has already started.
Babylon 5 belongs to the Fans, not the First Ones. It's time you got off your executive-suited butts and do something about it.
You do not understand...

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I think Warner forget that companies outside the US seem to be quite alright selling scifi on VHS so why can't they do it?

Because the VHS market is very different in other countries when it comes to things like TV series. Until the fairly recent advent of satellite TV and cable in most of the U.K. shows weren't in constant reruns and available for free all the time. Some shows would disappear from the air for a dozen or more years at a time between airings on commercial channels, in part because there were fewer broadcast channels serving most areas, and thus fewer outlets for reruns. This created a market for TV shows on VHS - it was the only way people could watch them. The syndication market in this country is so different that when I was in college I could watch different episodes of a show like M*A*S*H three times a day (four times on Tuesdays, when the show was still in production.) I can now watch Law & Order three times a day. Do I feel a burning need to own either of these shows? Not really, even though I like them both.
Ditto with most American TV viewers. They can watch their favorite shows as often and as many times as they like, or tape them off the air and archive them, so they don't see nearly as much reason to own them - especially on VHS. DVD is actually a much better format for TV series given the collector mind-set of the typical DVD buyer, plus the better quality, and durability of the discs. Throw in some extras and you might actually get me to buy M*A*S*H on disc, whereas I'd never even think about buying it on tape.
The fact is that VHS sales can't be used to demonstrate anything about the sales potential of a TV show on DVD. The market conditions overseas are so different that the VHS sales numbers tell us nothing, and the DVD and VHS markets here are so different that the VHS sales numbers also tell us nothing.
Regards,
Joe

 

[Nigel McN]

I realise that Joseph, I meant it more along the lines of 'If I simply wanted the show, I could have it. But I would rather spend my money on DVDs than VHS tapes'.
This is in NZ btw but everything pretty much still applies

 

[Steve Tack]

I choose to interpret that little blurb on DVDFILE as meaning that Warner just hasn't officially announced the season 1 boxed set for 2002 yet. Keep in mind that the junk about the VHS sales and "extensive work needed" is followed by the words "sources indicate", which to me seems pretty vague.
I have a feeling that the first disc is going to sell quite well and that we'll be getting the first season of real episodes next year some time. How's that for positive thinking?

 

[Philip Verdieck]

I have no doubt that the first disc will be used to gauge demand.
Thus, if you don't pick it up, because you are pissed at what you hear from a company whose home video department you know to be populated with idiots, then you are hurting yourself and the other B5 fans.
I will pick it up, and I will hope for the best, because this disc will move so fast the crackheads at Warner Home Video will wake up.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

I agree with Philip. Not buying the two TV movies in the best release they have ever had (with In the Beginning in widescreen for the first time in the U.S.) because of a rumor that they won't being doing the episodes is irrational. "Bad tape sales" and "extensive work needed" are excuses Warner Bros. has used in the past, but which they have not mentioned since announcing that B5 was coming to DVD starting in 2001 at last year's Studio Day. I think Peter Bracke either got no further info from Warner Bros. and looked at their earlier statements to figure out what was going on, or talked to people who are not in the loop on the project, who gave him out-of-date information.
I was hoping to raise this question on the WHV chat last night and get a definitive answer, but I guess we'll have to wait a little longer. I don't buy the "VHS didn't sell" argument, because it that was their thinking, why bother releasing the TV movies? They were part of the "failed" VHS release, so if B5 is a non-starter in DVD as far as WHV is concerned, it doesn't make any more sense to release them than it would to release the episodes. Unless they see this as a relatively cheap and "self-contained" way to test the waters and find out if the potential DVD market is really as big as people like me and Niall Young have been telling them it is for the past three or four years.
Regards,
Joe

 

[TimSniffin]

In addition to the rumored DVD release, I didn't buy the VHS sets because of the way Warner released them. Instead of season box sets, or several tapes from one season at a time, they released three-tape box sets from each season. So, instead of a continous release of a series that has one single storyline, we have some episodes from the first season, some from the second, some from the third, and so on. It was a ridiculous way of releasing a series built like Babylon 5, and I kept waiting for them to release season box sets.
That said, I sincerely hope that the delay of the series is because of the amount of work they need to put into them (which goes against what I've heard in the past), and not because they're getting cold feet. Somebody *should* ask about this in the chat to find out what's going on.
I've already ordered The Gathering/In the Beginning disc--even if Warner doesn't release the series, at least I'll have those two movies.

 

[SpenceJT]

A "season" boxed set of Babylon 5, released "in order" is also the reason that I didn't purchase the series release on VHS.
I sincerely hope that the two TV movies sell well, and prove the market viability for the series.
...I've already started to record over all of the broadcast episodes that I had taped!

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