Joseph DeMartino
Senior HTF Member
According to Ken Crane's "DVD Planet", Warner Bros. will be releasing B5 in anamorphic versions where appropriate. Here's the synopsis from the website:
quote: Synopsis:
Contains two made-for-TV feature films. The Gathering (Full Frame): In the series pilot, an interstellar summit strives to negotiate a lasting truce -- if an assassin's arrival does not have the opposite effect. In The Beginning (Letterboxed 1.85:1 16x9): Set a decade before the Babylon 5 project existed, Earth inadvertently starts a war with Minbar, shaping interstellar events and paving the way for construction of the universal safe port.[/quote]
All of this is based on material received from Warner Bros. (The original listing contained a couple of mistakes, including a reference to "an assassin's bullet" - the assassin in The Gathering uses poison - which Ken Crane's assured me were in the original Warner Bros. text.)
The 1.85:1 is almost certainly a mistake (the Sci-Channel broadcast of In the Beginning is framed at 1.77:1, as are the episodes - which is what was intended since they were shot with HDTV in mind.) But it is heartening to see the word "anamorphic" associated with B5. This would seem to indicate that when they went back and created new masters from the original elements last year for the Sci-Fi widescreen edition, they were smart enough to do hi-res digital masters, instead of making them NTSC-only. (The previous widescreen versions, created beginning in 1997, were PAL-only because Warner Bros. didn't believe that there would be a market for a widescreen edition in the U.S. This made them essentially useless for either anamorphic DVD or the Sci-Fi Channel, since a straight PAL-to-NTSC transfer would not be of DVD quality.)
So it looks like they have grown a brain in the interim, and while creating the Sci-Fi widescreen version they produced the hi-res masters that they will eventually need for HDTV syndication, and then downconverted it to letterboxed NTSC for the broadcast tapes. This is the best indication to date that the episodes will be presented the way they were always meant to be seen - in anamorphic widescreen.
Not surprisingly, the sound format is given as "surround." I didn't hold out much hope that Warner Bros. would go to the expense of remixing either the movies or the series in DD 5.1 - certainly not for the first, barebones, "test" disc. It is even more unlikely that they will go to such an expense for the 110 regular episodes, although there is a chance that some of the later movies might qualify for a re-mix. (A Call to Arms was originally mixed in DD 5.1 and downmixed for broadcast, as were all the episodes of Crusade, so that film should be DD when it arrives on disc.) Still, Dolby Pro Logic on DVD should sound better than any previous TV broadcast. Because B5 used a very dynamic sound mix, many local stations "clipped" the sound during the original broadcast, and many cable systems don't carry channels like TNT and Sci-Fi in stereo at all. Sci-Fi has also had sound problems with some episodes, although JMS has said that the original master tapes, which he reviewed after the original widescreen screw-up, all sounded fine to him.
Anyway, this looks like good news. I'm also encouraged to see that retailers other than Amazon are now taking pre-orders for the disc, which should increase sales. (DVD Planet is selling the disc for about a buck less than Amazon.com by the way, an incredible $13.99.)
Regards,
Joe
------------------
P.S.
If I haven't totally screwed this up, here's what the cover is going to look like:
[Edited last by Joseph DeMartino on September 02, 2001 at 10:04 PM]
quote: Synopsis:
Contains two made-for-TV feature films. The Gathering (Full Frame): In the series pilot, an interstellar summit strives to negotiate a lasting truce -- if an assassin's arrival does not have the opposite effect. In The Beginning (Letterboxed 1.85:1 16x9): Set a decade before the Babylon 5 project existed, Earth inadvertently starts a war with Minbar, shaping interstellar events and paving the way for construction of the universal safe port.[/quote]
All of this is based on material received from Warner Bros. (The original listing contained a couple of mistakes, including a reference to "an assassin's bullet" - the assassin in The Gathering uses poison - which Ken Crane's assured me were in the original Warner Bros. text.)
The 1.85:1 is almost certainly a mistake (the Sci-Channel broadcast of In the Beginning is framed at 1.77:1, as are the episodes - which is what was intended since they were shot with HDTV in mind.) But it is heartening to see the word "anamorphic" associated with B5. This would seem to indicate that when they went back and created new masters from the original elements last year for the Sci-Fi widescreen edition, they were smart enough to do hi-res digital masters, instead of making them NTSC-only. (The previous widescreen versions, created beginning in 1997, were PAL-only because Warner Bros. didn't believe that there would be a market for a widescreen edition in the U.S. This made them essentially useless for either anamorphic DVD or the Sci-Fi Channel, since a straight PAL-to-NTSC transfer would not be of DVD quality.)
So it looks like they have grown a brain in the interim, and while creating the Sci-Fi widescreen version they produced the hi-res masters that they will eventually need for HDTV syndication, and then downconverted it to letterboxed NTSC for the broadcast tapes. This is the best indication to date that the episodes will be presented the way they were always meant to be seen - in anamorphic widescreen.
Not surprisingly, the sound format is given as "surround." I didn't hold out much hope that Warner Bros. would go to the expense of remixing either the movies or the series in DD 5.1 - certainly not for the first, barebones, "test" disc. It is even more unlikely that they will go to such an expense for the 110 regular episodes, although there is a chance that some of the later movies might qualify for a re-mix. (A Call to Arms was originally mixed in DD 5.1 and downmixed for broadcast, as were all the episodes of Crusade, so that film should be DD when it arrives on disc.) Still, Dolby Pro Logic on DVD should sound better than any previous TV broadcast. Because B5 used a very dynamic sound mix, many local stations "clipped" the sound during the original broadcast, and many cable systems don't carry channels like TNT and Sci-Fi in stereo at all. Sci-Fi has also had sound problems with some episodes, although JMS has said that the original master tapes, which he reviewed after the original widescreen screw-up, all sounded fine to him.
Anyway, this looks like good news. I'm also encouraged to see that retailers other than Amazon are now taking pre-orders for the disc, which should increase sales. (DVD Planet is selling the disc for about a buck less than Amazon.com by the way, an incredible $13.99.)
Regards,
Joe
------------------
P.S.
If I haven't totally screwed this up, here's what the cover is going to look like:
[Edited last by Joseph DeMartino on September 02, 2001 at 10:04 PM]
