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Status of Babylon 5? (2 Viewers)

Ric Easton

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I heard a rumor on another forum that Warner may be bagging the idea of any future releases. Anyone know the scoop? I want this one badly!

-Ric
 

David Williams

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No, the first season hasn't been bagged. WBHV did a deal with Columbia House for the first season on DVD to be sold there as well as in stores. Several sites have reported that the first season will be released before the end of the year. The Digital Bits' Rumor Mill:

Our sources tell us that more Babylon 5 episodes will be released widely in stores on DVD by Warner later this year.

The sales on the pilot disc were very decent, so unless something has changed in the last 6 weeks, they are still planning a release.
 

todd s

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I wonder if they are waiting to see how the Friends season one box set sells. Also, where is Joseph DeMartino? He usually has the most recent info or rumors.
 

Joseph DeMartino

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It was Columbia House that recently bagged their planned 2-episodes per disc, one disc every 4-to-6 weeks subscription deal, as they announced in a letter sent to those who had signed up for the series. (I'm guessing this was due to insufficient interest in the project, since most people who follow B5 are aware of the rumored Warner Home Video release later this year.)
That's probably where the latest rumor comes from. I'm confident that "The Bits" knows what they're talking about. WHV has been going back on forth on B5 for years. They were in a quandry: They knew there was a lot of interest in the show. But they also gradually figured out that there was only interest in a specific kind of release: Widescreen, full-season sets, some kind of extras. Since they were concerned about costs, and very skeptical about the appeal of TV shows on home video in general, and B5 in particular, it has taken a series of events to move them towards finally releasing the show in an edition they can reasonably expect to sell. 1) The success of the X-Files full-season sets, 2) Sci-Fi's demand for a widescreen version to broadcast (paid for by Warner Bros. television, not Home Video), 3) fan response to the "Best of Friends", 4) the success of the movie "test disc", 5)Paramount's plans for TNG. (And a change in management in the WHV marketing department.)
WHV has had plans for B5 for some time - at "Studio Day" in 2000 a Warner Bros. rep told me face-to-face (Bill Hunt of "The Bits" was standing next to me) that B5 was on the schedule for 2001, but that he had no further information because he wasn't involved in the project himself. (Still, it is revealing that somebody briefed him to expect the question, and supply him with an answer.) I suspect someone got cold feet about the idea again, so they fulfilled their "promise" (just barely) by releasing the "test disc" right before the end of the year.
JMS reported back in December that they were "conforming" the S1 episodes for DVD release, so preliminary work would seem to have begun even before the end of last year. At this point I see no reason to doubt the information from "The Bits" or believe the usual "sky-is-falling" rumors. It is true that Warner Home Video has not officially announced anything about further B5 DVDs, but if the release is scheduled for "this fall" (meaning September, October or November) we may not see an annoucement for several more months. I remain cautiously optimistic.
Regards,
Joe
 

Bryan

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Instead of seeing how Friends does, they ought to look at how ST:TNG does. I know it's a different company, but Friends insn't Sci-Fi either.

For the ST:TOS Covers, those were deffinity needed (thanks Ric) but the B5 should hopefully be of better caliber. But, unfortunatly, I hate the Warner cases. I thought they were going to get rid of those last year.
 

Joseph DeMartino

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TNG will tell them nothing. Trek (along with Twilight Zone) is one of the rare exceptions to the rule that "TV shows don't sell." (The various shows have all sold well on LD and VHS, when most other TV shows died. Even the inferior TOS release sold, just not in the numbers that Paramount expected anything with the magic Trek name to reach. If anything the TOS experience made Warner Bros. say, "If that's all they sold with Trek, we have no chance with B5.") Within the industry Trek isn't even thought of as "SF" - it is simply Star Trek, a genre unto itself. That's why the success of TNG didn't help any other space shows (except for its own sequels) get on the air. If anything, it hindered them all, including B5.
WB will look at the TNG numbers and say, "Of course it sold, it's Trek." The Friends release will tell them much more, because it is exactly the kind of show that wouldn't have sold in full-season sets on VHS, because of cost, storage and deterioriation problems. It is exactly the kind of series that Warner Bros. needs to see succeed in order to finally convince them that the DVD market really is different than the VHS market, especially as far as TV series are concerned. They still haven't quite figured this out. The only reason they've been looking at season sets of B5 for so long is that even they realize that a continuing story like that has to be released in its entirety or not at all.
Regards,
Joe
 

Yee-Ming

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I wonder if WB USA ever considers how well (or not) full season boxsets do in UK (R2)? after all, Friends has been available in UK for some time now.
or do they consider Brits to have different buying habits? :confused:
 

Joseph DeMartino

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Brits do have different buying habits, going back to the VHS days. TV series have always done well on home video in the U.K., while they died on the vine over here.
That's why B5 was released on VHS over there years before any tapes appeared here, and why the release was completed there. (And why you got Crusade on tape, which has never been released on this side of The Pond.)
There are such differences between most countries, which is why Warner Home Video (U.S.) will pay absolutely no attention the the U.K. market - why should they? Whichever department or division within Warner Bros. is responsible for releasing DVDs in different countries will reach its own, independent, decision on what (if anything) to do about B5. One of the reasons I snapped up an "hackable" Apex DVD player a few years ago was precisely the fear that B5 would eventually be released on DVD in the U.K. and not released over here - given their contrasting experiences on VHS. (The Apex can not only be made region-free, but it can read a PAL disc and display the output on an NTSC TV.)
Granted, a U.S. release makes it more likely that the show will be released elsewhere (since a lot of the heavy-lifting in terms of mastering, menus and supplements will have been done), but there is no direct connection between releases here and those elsewhere for something like this. The markets are just too different. WHV already knows B5 does well on home video in the U.K. (That's why they released The Gathering and In the Beginning on separate discs for more money over there - they figured that's what the market would bear. Over here they were worried that there was no market - so they made the price as attractive as possible and issued them on a single disc to save costs.)
Regards,
Joe
 

Eric F

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I want it!
Some of us can't afford or don't want the crappy cable service that's provided in our area. The only good way I get to see these shows is on DVD.
I'm still waiting for season 2 of SG-1. I hope B5 sets arrive a little quicker, well, alot quicker.
 
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Joe, is there any word on whether the 16:9 versions of B5 for a future DVD release will have corrected effects shots? I know that there has been some concern about this in the past.
 

Joseph DeMartino

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for a future DVD release will have corrected effects shots?
The F/X shots are correct, at least as far as the producers, Straczynski and Netter, are concerned. When they elected to shoot the series in Super35 while composing for both 1.33:1 and 1.77:1, they realized that the time and money for doing the same with the CGI would not be there. The F/X would have to be done at 1.33:1. Although there was a vague hope that if the show did well enough Warner Bros. might be persuaded to extend and re-render the pure CGI, and recompose the composite live-action/CGI stuff, they realized that they needed a "plan B" as this was unlikely.
Plan B was to design and compose such shots with "dead space" nar the top and/or bottom so that they could be cropped to 1.77:1 when the time came. This is exactly what has been done, since WB has indeed declined to spend tons of money tweaking the F/X of a nearly 10 year old cult TV show. :) Everybody surprised by this, please raise your hands.
Having now watched a couple of runs of the entire series in widescreen on The Sci-Fi Channel (since the initial run where Warner Bros. and their subcontractor had actually screwed up the new masters) along with the Anamorphic transfer of In the Beginning, I'd say they did a pretty good job. I think most of the FX or composite shots (especially on a widescreen TV) look better and more focused trimmed to 1.77:1. The few shots that don't work are more than made up for by the improved appearance of the purely live action footage - which, after all, makes up the majority of every episode.
Some technical issues about how the cropped 1.77:1 CGI is actually trasnferred to DVD have been raised, but those are way over my head and I have no idea to what degree Warner Bros. has listened to the criticism levelled at the first disc in this regard. (On my set, In the Beginning looked better than it ever has, including the CGI, and that's good enough for me.)
If you take a look at Bart Barenberg's site you'll see frame comparisons between the (*gasp*) UK VHS "standard" and widescreen releases, which I think bear out my preference for the "cropped" widescreen.
Regards,
Joe
 

PhilipG

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Shouldn't it be a lot easier now to re-render these shots? After all, computer speeds have improved exponentially in the past however-many-it-is years? Or is it not just a matter of loading up the source from CD, hitting the "render for 16x9" button, and sitting back?

edit: I am, of course, referring to the CGI-only scenes.
 

Ryan Spaight

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That's right. When they went to do the Legend of the Rangers movie, it was discovered that WB had lost all the CGI models and other digital assets. The only thing they could lay their hands on were the models given to Sierra for the aborted B5 PC game.

So the chances of a re-render for 16x9 are none and none.

Ryan
 

Joseph DeMartino

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movie, it was discovered that WB had lost all the CGI models and other digital assets.
While it is true that they had lost all of the source files (models, textures, backgrounds, etc.) it is by no means clear that they lost all the files for the finished shows. The two sets of materials were likely stored separately. Certainly they had access to the fully-rendered files as recently as when they were creating and then fixing the Sci-Fi Channel widescreen edition. So there might be something to work with - if WB is willing to spend the money. We'll just have to see.

Regards,

Joe
 

Joseph DeMartino

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I'm astonished that nobody has commented on this in two days. Is there a B5 convention I don't know about somewhere that's pulled everybody off the forum? :)
Joe
 

CaptDS9E

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LOL joe nah im just hanging over with the other guys at the B5lr boards :)
 

Ric Easton

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Joe, we're just waitin' for you to come up with more info. Although what you gave us so far seems hopeful, I can't wait for something rock solid!

-Ric
 

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