No Advanced Babylon 5 Reviews? (1 Viewer)

[Michael Sliger]

Joe, Total Action Universe does have a crude way to checking an order status on its website. Just click on Account, then login, then click on Account again. You will find a link to your Order History at the bottom of that page. Your order status is only shown by a single character. An email should also be sent once the order has supposedly shipped. I have had some orders with them show up 3+ weeks after that email, but usually 5 days after I complained via phone (suggesting that they didn't send my order before my harrassment). Andy, get on TAU's case if you have not heard anything by next week, but don't worry about the situation yet.

 

[Brian E]

Anyone know it the release in Canada will be the same, packaging/content, as the US one? Amazon.ca is selling for $48.82 US which is the best price I've seen.

 

[Derek M Germano]

Here is a review with some screen shots:
http://www.thecinemalaser.com/dvd_re...on-one-dvd.htm

 

[Dave Scarpa]

All In All A decent review, I'm especially glad to see the 5.1 Remaster is good. I cannot wait to get this set I think,like Sopranos, I'll breeze thru it pretty quickly !
I've purposely skipped watching any B5 ina couple of years to see it in all it's glory !

 

[Paul McElligott]

From the review:

However, the special effects sequences would appear to have been taken from the 4:3 broadcast masters and digitally reformatted to 16:9, instead of being recreated from the original computer files in the correct format.

Unfortunately, the original source files used to create the CGI special effects were lost, making it impossible to redo the effects for DVD.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

Yeah I've known about the source for the effect, too bad. How do you LOSE something like that?

 

[Lars_J]

Yeah I've known about the source for the effect, too bad. How do you LOSE something like that?

How? Two factors:
1. You are Warner Brothers (implying a certain corporate incompetence)
2. And you don't care about your property.

Throughout B5's history, support from WB has been ambvivalent at best. Thay they would not bother to properly back up this kind of stuff is just another indicator of that.

 

[SpenceJT]

Joe D. may have the specifics, but I can tell you that while the CGI models are intact, the files from the effects scenes that were rendered in 4x3 were lost (who? who knows... perhaps the backup tapes were damaged or inadvertently formatted).

Since the actual rendered files for the scenes were lost, these scenes would have to be totally re-created for a 16x9 presentation.

Too bad about all of this. I hope that this applies to only season one, and that perhaps they have the needed files for later seasons.

Either way, after reading the reviews, I can't freak'n wait! It looks like sales of the collection are strong. As of Tuesday, the season set was ranked at #25 on Amazon.com's top selling DVDs! Hopefully sales will be strong enough to warrant the remaining seasons. I'm considering purchasing two sets, to help the cause!

It will give me something to watch on Friday nights in place of Farscape reruns!

Regards,

Spence

 

[Dana Fillhart]

Weren't the sfx for the first part of season 1 done on Amigas and the second part done on SGI's?

Maybe when they moved to SGI workstations somebody said "Guess we won't be needing THESE any more!" and tossed the Amigas.

 

[SpenceJT]

Weren't the sfx for the first part of season 1 done on Amigas and the second part done on SGI's?

It was my understanding that the early effect were rendered on some souped up Amiga's running a highly customized version of "Video Toaster". I believe some Macintosh Power PCs also played a part in the early seasons. The "softness" mentioned in the reviews may have something to do with the equipment that they were using at that particular time.

I know that they switched over to SGI systems later, but at what point I am not certain. It may been at the point that Netter Digital took over effects. I remember reading something about the change in effects company resulted in far higher motion picture quality, whereas the earlier effects would show the poor quality if displayed on the likes of a motion picture screen.

...for that matter, the company that they dumped in favor of Netter Digital may have conveniently "lost" the files needed for a 16x9 rendering. Perhaps intellectual property, or bitterness played a roll in the missing files?

Joe D? You are well informed in all things B5, do you have a take on this? Are you out there?

Regards,
Spence

 

[Robert Floto]

Actually it was the first two seasons that were done by Foundation Imaging on Amigas. These were not customized versions of the Video Toaster, just custom plugins for it's version of Lightwave 3D.

When Netter Digital took over (under the supervision of Doug Netter...a really nice guy), they were running the stand-alone versions of Lightwave 3D on Silicon Graphics workstations. Foundation also switched to stand-alone versions of Lightwave and took over effects work on STAR TREK: VOYAGER.

It does not surprise me that re-rendering effects shots from season one and two is difficult or impossible. I just was not aware that those shots were originally rendered in 4x3. I was under the impression that they were rendered in 16x9 with a "safe area" for cropping.

 

[Paul McElligott]

Joe D. may have the specifics, but I can tell you that while the CGI models are intact, the files from the effects scenes that were rendered in 4x3 were lost (who? who knows... perhaps the backup tapes were damaged or inadvertently formatted).

The CGI wireframe models were lost, too. That's why there were none of the familiar Babylon 5 ships in the Legend of the Rangers TV-movie.

 

[Christopher E]

Unfortunately the cgi was rendered at 720*480 (Brodcast Resolution)in 4:3. However the fx shots were framed with 16:9 in mind. The series creators figured that once HDTV was standard the computational power needed to re-render the fx shots for 1920*1080 16:9 would be dirt cheap, but they didn't count on Warner losing all the files. Also, I believe foundation imaging did the cgi for B5 until the end of season 3.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Quote:

Sadly, no. That just wasn't possible given the time constraints the series was produced under. (As it is some episodes had their effects delivered only hours before they were due to be uplinked to the satellite for distribution to local channels airing the show.) One compromise that JMS mentioned might have been tried on Legend of the Rangers if it had become a series was designing and rendering the CGI at the same ratio as the Super35 live footage, thus making the conversion process identical for both, and making it easier to deal with composite shots and virtual sets, without adding the rendering overhead that full-blown 1.78:1 hi-res rendering would entail.
Regards,
Joe

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

P.S.
I was glad to see this review was not only written by someone who enjoys the show (and therefore knows what fans are most concerned about) but who actually knows what he's talking about. The earlier review contained a number of howlers.

the Babylon 5 space station, the biggest space station ever created.

Er, actually, Babylon 5 wasn't even the biggest of the Babylon stations. All four of the earlier stations were bigger than B5, and that's just what the Humans built.
Regards,
Joe

 

[Paul McElligott]

Damn, Joe... Sometimes I think you should write a book about B5.

 

[GregoryP]

I'll admit that I was not going to purchase these DVDs originally, but after watching the past few months of reruns on the Sci-Fi channel I asked myself, "Who am I kidding?" The series in anamorphic widescreen, 5.1 sound and extras is too much to resist.

Does anyone know if there are going to be any in store deals on B5?

Joe - Thanks for your contributions on the various B5 message boards. I see your posts a lot and they are always very informative.

Gregory

 

[Aaron_Brez]

>(As it is some episodes had their effects delivered only >hours before they were due to be uplinked to the satellite >for distribution to local channels airing the show.)
Yep. [grin] I still have a VHS (mono) copy of the original airing of "Chrysalis", where the virtual set behind Londo when he met Morden was missing and you could see the glowing neon "EXIT" sign against the back wall of the studio.
I'm guessing at least some of the softness of the FX is due to some kind of image processing to remove upconversion artifacts from moving the FX from 4:3 to 16:9 anamorphic. (Q: did they upconvert the FX to 1080i for an HD master, and then downconvert to 480i/p-anamorphic for DVD? That could be a problem right there-- lots of conversion processing!)
It's a pity the effects can never be re-rendered to 16x9 or HD-- especially the virtual sets, since the live image is actually being cropped *twice* in that case-- but this is the best we're gonna get until HD-DVD. (And even in that case, they'll just be upconverting yet *again* to 1080i, so barring significantly better algorithms the FX will likely never look better than they do this time around.)
They'll certainly look better than my VHS tapes. And fit on a smaller shelf-space, too. I'm sold!

 

[Craig S]

The earlier review contained a number of howlers.

Yeah, that line that said the Centauri were "like Gypsies" had me on the floor.

 

[Dave Scarpa]

Greg I Finally decided to buy it from Amazon.Ca I don't think anyone will beat the $48.25 price on this set. I'm only hoping the Region 1 canadien release is the same.