No Advanced Babylon 5 Reviews? (1 Viewer)

[Scott Kriefall]

Anyone else notice some very obvious, vertical blue lines in the "downbelow" scenes on episode 2 ("Soulhunter")?

 

[Aaron_Brez]

Yep. They're not on my tape of the original broadcast, so I've got to assume some kind of damage to the original elements in between initial air and the anamorphic/HD re-telecine.

Annoying. Just out of curiosity-- were these apparent on the Sci-Fi channel non-anamorphic widescreen editions?

 

[Scott Kriefall]

Sorry about the very late response to this. I just checked my copy of Sci-Fi Channel's widescreen airing. It does not suffer from the annoying vertical blue lines/streaks. This seems to suggest that this may have been caused by a lack of proper QC when creating the compressed MPEG data, or at some other point in the DVD authoring process.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Well, I'm confused about this whole "blue streaks" business. I just checked my DVD, watched the whole episode, scarcely paid attention to the dialogue, just stared at the screen in every scene, especially those set in Downbelow. Verdict? No streaks, horizontal or vertical, blue or any other color. I've read posts by people who see these streaks on their TV, but not when they watch the disc on a computer monitor fed by a DVD-ROM drive. I've seen posts saying that the streaks aren't on the Sci-Fi widescreen broadcasts - and posts saying that the are. I've even seen posts from folks who checked old 4:3 homemade VHS copies from TNT and PTEN saying that the streaks are there in those versions.

All I can say is I don't see them, and I've been looking. I have a 56" Toshiba widescreen TV (analog). It was ISF calibrated a couple of years ago, and periodically tuned up with VE and later Avia.

Regards,

Joe

 

[Aaron_Brez]

I don't know what to tell you, Joe, other than maybe you're looking in the wrong spot. I saw them on my laptop monitor during Soul Hunter-- watch when the swindler is being chased by the swindlee (I'd give you minute and second, but my mother-in-law's sleeping in the DVD room right now so I can't).

Popped it into my set-top box (TV calibrated with Avia a month ago), and saw them there, too.

Very obvious stuff, too. Vertical streaking, looked like damage to the film negative, went away when POV switched to the Soul Hunter in Medbay, brooding on "It comes, it stirs, blah blah blah", came back when the scene cut back to downbelow.

It looks to me like the original film elements from that camera were damaged. With the possible caveat that my VHS tape is second generation recorded on SLP mode, I saw nothing from the original airing. Perhaps the damage was there, but cropping the shot for 4:3 minimized the effect?

 

[CaptDS9E]

Its not a blue streak is a blue line down the screen. Its in a few shots in that episode. I looked at the copy i have on tape and it was there also.

Capt

 

[Randy Korstick]

Joe
It sounds like we have the same TV and I definately see the streaks. I don't think you could of missed them because they are real obvious. I checked my Laserdisc copy and they are not on that copy so this is real puzzling.

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Found this in a post on a B5 fan board and thought it was interesting:

I mentioned in an earlier post the S1 DVD transfer was bad on my DVD player and good on my PC. Then I noticed that the DVD player was switching from "video" mode to "film" mode very frequently. I took the player out of "auto" and forced it to video. This got rid of a lot of the pixelation and all of the combing effects that I saw.

It seems to me that a lot of the reported "flaws" in this set (dirt and scratches aside) are player/monitor dependent. If switching his player from "auto" to "video" made nearly everything this fellow had spent another long post complaining about disappear, I have to wonder how "bad" the actual data on the discs really is.
All I can say is on my set they look gorgeous. The CGI is a tiny bit soft, and does show some aliasing from time to time but mostly it isn't noticable and I'm seeing plenty of detail in the exterior shots that I never saw on broadcast, tape or LD. Over all I'd give this set at least an 8 on a scale of 10, and hope the future sets are even better. I certainly don't understand what some of the reviewers were complaining about, or how fans can post threads saying that the discs look worse than VHS tapes - unless their setups are either showing flaws that mine doesn't, or introducing flaws that aren't there. I suppose if you watch the show on a 100" FPTV system it won't look as good. But one of the ways they brought the show in on half the budget of ST:TNG was by making things look "just good enough" for NTSC resolution and the average TV size. They took advantage of the fact that an FX shot or an alien makeup that was going to be watched on a 25" screen didn't have to look as good as it would in a feature film that was going to be projected on a 30 foot high theater screen. So there are limits to how much scrutiny some of this stuff can take - and they're just inherent in the source material, not a reflection of "poor quality" in the DVDs.
Regards,
Joe

 

[Randy Korstick]

Joe
Good post on the switching to video mode on the player. I think I may try that. These do seem to heavily depend on the setup for how they look because the CGI scenes do not look that bad on my set either but any of the filmed scenes that are darkly lit are very grainy and pixelated much worse than the CGI scenes on my set. Any filmed scenes that are brightly lit look good and better than the CGI scenes. Maybe the video mode on the player will help with this also.

 

[Max Leung]

I have a Panasonic RP91 DVD player. I think it properly switches from film mode to video mode and vice versa, but I'll have to double check with the Babylon 5 set.

It would make sense that the CGI sequences would be done in video mode, then switch to film mode for the live action scenes. So far, all the live action sequences look pretty good on my TW40X81 display.

 

[John Graves]

Hello Joe D,
Thanks for the tip! On my 93"(diagonal) DLP, the discs don't look so good.:frowning: Principal photography looks fine, but the Composites and stand alone CGI are either very blurry, or very pixelated. My projector will allow me to choose Film/Video/Auto, so I'll try again and just use the 'Video' setting.
Mucho Gracias,
John Graves

 

[John Graves]

IT WORKED
Thanks, Joe DeMartino, for locating and posting this information. Now the CGI's are acceptable on a 93" screen.
Good Viewing!
John G

 

[Philip Verdieck]

Just got my set. It is @#$%@#$ up. The hub design is the worst of all time.
Disc 1 was where it should be, condition fine
Discs 3 and 4 were loose.
As it is, 2-6 are scratched, 3 and 4 the worst.
This is pathetic, but it is expected from Warner, given the way they have handled B5. Par for the course.
My post in feedback:
http://www.hometheaterforum.com/htfo...hreadid=108506

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

This is pathetic, but it is expected from Warner, given the way they have handled B5.

Right. Warner Bros. hates B5 so much that they bought substandard case deliberately, so that thousands of discs would be damaged, angry customers would return them to retailers and retailers in turn would get pissed off with Warner Home Video. This is exactly how business decisions are made in offices all over this country every day. Everybody knows that major corporations screw things up deliberately to offend their own customers, and that they make major business decisions based on emotional reactions to their own products.
Sheesh!
Regards,
Joe

 

[John Graves]

...and somone on this forum has pictures of the head of the WB video division on the Grassy Knoll.
Joe? Are you having a bad week?
John G

 

[Joseph DeMartino]

Joe? Are you having a bad week?

How'd you guess?
But seriously, I've read so many post in the past two weeks from people who seem to seriously believe that there is some kind of vast Warner Bros. conspiracy against B5 (the folks who only put up around $27 million each year to make the thing) that I had to vent a little. It doesn't help that most of these posts (and I'm not talking about the ones here) are from people who have no clue how the TV business, the home video business or any other business actually works. I can't believe that some of these people even have jobs, because even a burger flipper at McDonald's is going to pick up some idea about how business works after a couple of months on the job.
Regards,
Joe

 

[Andrea W]

anyway I watched disk #2 and found out that it was not the content it should be, instead it had the content from disk #4 (dispite the big #2 on the front of the DVD). I have checked all of the other DVD's and they are OK, but for some reason disk #2 has the same info on it as disk #4. So my big question is has anybody else had the same problem?

I personally haven't experienced this, but I've read reports of this on other forums (like DVD Talk).

Two of my discs were loose in the packaging, disc 2 and 4. Disc 4 was scuffed pretty bad and wouldn't play after it got a ways into an episode. I just exchanged my set today and disc 2 of my newly exchanged set was loose. It didn't appear scuffed or scratched at all, so I'm hoping to watch it soon. The hubs in this packaging really suck. I'm quite happy with set otherwise, though.

 

[Andy_Bu]

Seeing as I am still waiting for my B5 set from TAU :frowning: I still can't get involved in this conversation.
However, as an early warning measure, has any one run these disks on the SD5109 DVD player from Toshiba, and if so what were the results?
Andy

 

[John Graves]

Hi Folks,
Pardon a dumb question (my brain has turned to mush because I spend most of my lurking time over at the AVS forums),
but who the heck is TAU? (And considering how many people seem to displike these folks, why are you ordering from them?). I order my discs from DVD Planet.com (aka 'Ken Crane's'). They shipped the 1st season to arrive on the official 'street date'. Same with SG-1, etc, etc. I've been dealing with them for years (back to the Laserdisc days). They are reliable and fast.
Good Viewing,
John G

 

[Andy_Bu]

And considering how many people seem to displike these folks, why are you ordering from them

I had never dealt with them before, and they had the cheapest online price that I could find.

The worst part of all of this is that my discs are now weeks late and I could still run into the hub problem many others have (which is not TAU's fault of course).

Andy