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Bad news for Babylon 5 fans? (1 Viewer)

Philip Verdieck

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Actually, they did release them in order too. Maybe you had to sign up for it or something, but a friend of mine has a lot of them by now. I think he is in the 4th season.
 

Joseph DeMartino

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Regarding the VHS release:
Warner Bros. first licensed the series to Columbia House, which released them by subscription, pretty much in order. (There were one or two instances where Warner Bros. sent them master tapes out of order, but I think this was later fixed.) The demand for the CH tapes was so high that Warner Home Video finally decided to release the tapes via retail stores six months or a year later. (At the same time they license the series to Image for a laserdisc release.)
Warner Bros. stopped supplying master tapes to CH around the same time they cancelled the retail VHS release, but later allowed CH to continue with their B5 collection. Last I heard (four or five months ago) CH had released all the episodes in order up through "Interesctions in Realtime" from season 4. They have also released The Gathering, but I'm not sure if there is a CH version of In the Beginning or any of the other TV movies.
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.
That isn't what happened.
WHV's tapes were available in both three-tape sets and as individual (two-episode) tapes. They were released in two waves:
The first wave consisted of Season 1 3-packs alternating with S5 3-packs. The feeling was that many fans had missed S5 when the show moved to TNT either because they didn't have cable or couldn't get TNT, so S5 should be released as soon as possible. The two seasons alternated until all episodes had been released, and the episodes were released in order within each season.
The second wave worked forward from S1 and backwards from S5, and therefore alternated S2 and S4. They cancelled the release of the tapes entirely after 4 sets (12 episodes) of S2 and 2 sets (6 episodes) of S4 had been released. NO S3 episodes were ever released by Warner Home Video in the retail channel.
So the VHS release was certainly odd, but not as random and irrational as the quote above indicates.
Regards,
Joe
 

TheLongshot

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Jason
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.
This sounds more like how the laserdiscs were released, which the episodes were mixed up.
Jason
------------------
My DVD Collection
 

Daniel L

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The B5 Tapes & LD sold to retailers were the exact same pattern. Apparently the only way to buy the whole sereis was throuhg Columbia House.
Babylon 5 -
Fool me once, shame on me.
Fool me twice, f**k you.
Daniel L
 

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