[dizzy9]

Excellent news. Babylon 5 is underappreciated, but it has mainly good episodes and several amazing ones.[0]

However, if I can be cynical for a moment: The article title is misleading. Only a few episodes have been uploaded so far. At the current rate of one episode per week, it will take until March 2028 to conclude all five seasons. That's assuming they post every episode, and allow the episodes to remain up in the long term.

For some reason, the first episode of season 1, Midnight on the Firing Line, is missing from the YouTube upload, which is a pretty critical omission. YouTube is also a minefield of spoilers in the video recommendations. I can't recommend the YouTube uploads to newcomers right now. The Blu-ray collection appears to be available for about $100.

[0]: https://seriesgraph.com/show/3137-babylon-5

[Izkata]

Fun fact: The S4 finale that rates merely "good" is actually a rapidly put together alternate finale when they got renewed for S5, using some of that season's budget. This was so they could delay the real series finale to S5 (originally filmed for S4, when they were unsure they'd get an S5).

[JLO64]

Definitely not my favorite episode, but I got a kick out of the similarities to A Canticle for Leibowitz during one of the segments in it.

[philwelch]

That was a very conscious and deliberate homage.

[krapp]

It wasn't conscious or intentional. JMS only realized the connection halfway through writing it.

    "It was only when I was about halfway into the act that I thought, "Oh, crud, this is the same area Canticle explored." And for several days I set it aside and strongly considered dropping it, or changing the venue (at one point considered setting it in the ruins of a university, but I couldn't make that work realistically...who'd be supporting a university in the ruins of a major nuclear war? Who'd have the *resources* I needed? The church, or what would at least LOOK like the church. My sense of backstory here is that the Anla-shok moved in and started little "abbeys" all over the place, using the church as cover, but rarely actually a part of it, which was why they had not gotten their recognition, and would never get it. Rome probably didn't even know about them, or knew them only distantly.)

    Anyway...at the end of the day, I decided to leave it as it was, since I'd gotten there on an independent road, we'd already had a number of monks on B5, and there's been a LOT of theocratic science fiction written beyond Canticle...Gather Darkness, aspects of Foundation, others." -- Lurker's Guide

[philwelch]

My mistake, I knew he was aware of and commented on the parallel but I misremembered the details.

[mathgeek]

Where is your source for that? Would love to read anything and everything BTS on B5.

[JdeBP]

Then go to Midwinter, the home of The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5, and prepare to be absorbed for days.

[mathgeek]

Oh for sure, love it. I just hadn’t seen the above before and thought maybe a new source!

[Groxx]

Yeah, so far I see mislabeled-pilot, and episodes 3 and 4.

That... does not (currently) look like "Babylon 5 is now free to watch". That looks like a minor probing to see if they can charge for it again somewhere. That kind of thing happens constantly, and it's rare that it ever finishes.

[watwut]

Based on other articles, the plan is to release an episode a week. They are giving us 90ties experience, I guess. They just somehow managed to screw it up.

They did not released episode 1, which gives an authentic 90ties experience In 90ties people missed episodes. And misnamed the pilot movie as episode 1 and mislabeled other episodes.

And they dont use playlist and will be simultanepusly releasing clips from episodes, so it will be wonderfull mess.

[mr_toad]

If it’s like the rest of YouTube it’ll quickly be buried in a pile of reaction videos, fan edits, Russian voiceovers and low-resolution re-uploads, with black borders on all sides.

[pseudohadamard]

Well, as long as they don't opt for the Ferengi MBA school, or the Darth Vader one: "I am altering the deal. Pray I don't alter it any further".

[TitaRusell]

This reminds me. Where I live Babylon 5 was broadcast at midnight on a second rate cable network.

[1970-01-01]

Without understanding the motive behind it, you should assume it is not good news. You're right to be skeptical of the upload count. All they're doing is sheltering the show on YouTube until the view counters rise to the point of another streaming service making a charitable offer. Then, poof all episodes are moved to another service without notice.

[pseudohadamard]

This is why I bought everything on DVD years ago, I can watch and re-watch as often as I like and there's nothing some "rights holder" can do about the content that I paid for with my money.

[wiradikusuma]

Isn't the linked YouTube video title literally "Season 1, Episode 1"?

[thinkingemote]

yes, somewhat incorrectly as its the pilot / first movie, that came out before season 1 started

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Babylon_5#Pilot_film_(1993)

The numbering of the uploaded episodes seems to be off by one versus wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Babylon_5_episodes#Sea...

[rapind]

> The numbering of the uploaded episodes seems to be off by one versus wikipedia.

That’s because there are two hard things when it comes to uploading content.

- Off by one errors.

[nobody9999]

>Isn't the linked YouTube video title literally "Season 1, Episode 1"?

Yes and no It's the pilot (and consequently the first[2]) episode "The Gathering", which actually doesn't have an episode number.[0]

The first aired episode was S1E1 "Midnight on the Firing Line".

The former was released as a "TV Movie" even though it was the pilot episode.

[0] http://www.midwinter.com/lurk/countries/us/eplist.html for the episode listings.[1]

[1] Be careful, a wrong click can end up giving you spoilers. :(

[2] I'd note that the pilot episode has significant personnel, prop and make-up differences from the rest of the series.

[iso1631]

> The Blu-ray collection appears to be available for about $100.

It saddens me that people aren't willing to pay a pittance in cash (about $1 an hour) for entertainment. They're willing to spend their time, but not their money.

This isn't just buying a 100 episode box set, it applies to people complaining "I'd have to spend $10 on $streaming_service to watch that 5 hour miniseries, that's terrible" too.

[squeedles]

I'd be delighted to spend that for a Blu-ray of the series but I'm afraid of getting the mangled version that they released on DVD.

For background, JMS knew the widescreen transition was coming so filmed everything in 16:9. As he put it at the time, it didn't really cost more, you just had to pay more attention to lighting at the wings. All CGI was done in 4:3 because it was thought to be easy to rerender in the future. Alas, the digital assets were not preserved properly and when the time came for DVD, nobody wanted to pay for more work. There may be places where they used the 16:9 masters, but anyplace where there was CGI, particularly where they were compositing over live action, basically chopped the top and bottom of the 4:3 resulting in a sub-VGA mess.

It made everyone weep.

[VilleSalonen]

Blu-ray version is definitely not perfect but I wouldn't call it mangled. It is presented in 4:3 which might be an issue for some viewers but it is absolutely the best this show has ever looked: https://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Babylon-5-The-Complete-Series...

[dingaling]

Have we just forgotten the DRM issues with Blu-Ray? I can't even watch them on Linux without relying on leaked keys.

That's why legal unencrypted availability online is such a boon.

[tsimionescu]

Why do you care about "legal"? Buy some version to have a legal and moral right to watch the show, and torrent a good version you can actually watch.

[account42]

Or rip the Blu Rays, which is pretty easy these days, especially for non-4K releases.

[squeedles]

Reading the review, it looks like they gave it the best treatment they could with what they had, definitely better than the DVD. Still a shame that WB didn't go the extra mile and redo the CGI, but maybe that will happen in time.

[Anonyneko]

The CGI was preserved well enough for the fans who got access to some of it to re-render it in HD and upload to YouTube [0]. If WB cared even a little, fully CGI-rendered scenes could have been remastered relatively easily. The only scenes that are truly un-recoverable without redoing from scratch are those composited ones.

But like the others said, the BDs are fine, by far the best the series has ever looked, even if the difference between the crisp live action and the blurry upscaled CGI is rather jarring.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WlDaygRhrg8

[roywiggins]

I watched a chunk of the version on Tubi which I believe was the same as the BluRay, and I thought it looked great. They just do the whole thing in 4:3 which is maybe not the ideal solution to the problem but is seamless. CGI shots are obviously upscaled but it looks good enough not to intrude.

[rabf]

You know, AI might actually be able to fix this!

[cosmic_cheese]

I think the aversion to subscribing to a streaming service for a single series has more to do with the recurring nature of the subscription than it does the price. You have to remember to cancel it when you’re done, which is easy to forget with so many things bring for our attention these days. That $10 could easily multiply several times over if it slips your mind, at which point congratulations, you’ve paid a significant portion of the box set’s price to rent the series.

All streaming services should offer prepaid options, so you can add time in 30/60/90 day increments. Less mental overhead and it better matches how a lot of people pay for streaming anyway.

[autoexec]

> I think the aversion to subscribing to a streaming service for a single series has more to do with the recurring nature of the subscription than it does the price.

I think it's about not necessarily getting what you pay for. Shows are constantly leaving streaming platforms which is a problem if you want to watch something specific as opposed to just being happy to pay to watch whatever they feel like letting you see this week. Then they'll also silently censor content or remove entire episodes so you can't be sure if you've even watched the entirety of whatever show you intended to see if they have it at all.

They also like to reorder shows and even renumber seasons which can result in confusion and spoilers. Netflix is horrible when it comes to this. One example is the The Great British Bake Off. For some reason they insist on reordering them so that it starts with whatever the newest series is and then plays them backwards which is a pretty big problem. At the start of one series they even recap all of the winners of previous series spoiling them all for everyone watching the show on netflix.

If you just want to watch "something" by all means pay a monthly fee for a streaming service. If you want to watch a specific show and you want it to be there for you the next you want to watch it you're better off getting physical media or doing a little research and getting everything off the high seas.

[IshKebab]

Yeah 100% this. I want to watch Endeavour without ads, and I couldn't get some of it on Bittorrent (which is a first). It's available on ITVX for a subscription but there's literally nothing else I want to watch on there and I don't want to deal with cancellation & time pressure to watch it all.

I did consider buying a Blu-ray player and buying it on Blu-ray but it seems like they never actually released all the series on Blu-ray.

In the end I ended up figuring out how to download it without ads from ITVX. There's a tool which will bypass Widevine, download all the segments and splice them together without ads. Quite a pain to get working but still less annoying than yet another subscription. We already have Netflix, Disney, Prime, and a TV license.

[iso1631]

So ITV don't get any money, so they stop making this stuff

They gave you an option to pay for it without adverts, but you decided to invest your time and energy in bypassing the adverts rather than pay the cost of a pint of beer. You could have paid for it on Apple TV but perhaps you consider it too expensive.

How much do you value an episode? Presumably enough to watch it - so 90 minutes of your time, which at minimum wage is £18. But you don't value it £4 to watch a 90 minute program just once on apple tv, let alone how cheap itvx is.

Justify it to yourself all you want, just don't cry when TV series like that are no longer made.

[wat10000]

As if they want to help people sign up for short periods of time. You might as well suggest drug dealers sell non-addictive crack.

[Uvix]

When I buy the box set, at least I'll be able to watch it in perpetuity. $10 to own a 5 hour miniseries would be more than reasonable, but I don't want to have to pay $10 each time I want to watch it. (If I even can watch it, and they haven't lost the license in the interim.)

[jl6]

It’s not just pure value analysis, it’s a lack of confidence that the money will go to the people that deserve it.

[machomaster]

It's the opposite. It is the full confidence that the money will NOT go to the people that deserve it.

[wat10000]

I’m not going to spend a hundred bucks to try a series I may not even like. It would be one thing if I loved it and wanted to watch it again, or if I had seen enough to know that I want to watch it all. But that’s a lot of money for an unknown quantity.

[account42]

The problem with that logic is that the people who have the most time (kids/students) often don't tend to have a spare $1 per hour. Thankfully there are other options for them, yarr.

[deknos]

i would pay if it is in a format, which is not also trying to deceive me like bluray with its fucking DRM in its player.

[poisonarena]

for me, its downloading the torrent and keeping it forever on my hard drive and not paying 100 dollars.

[sylario]

I am incredibly out of the loop in the world of blu-ray. Do you still need to buy a terrible video player to read them legally on windows ? I give so little attention to physical media that I do not even know if 4k blu-ray use the same blu-ray storage format or if it is some sort of upgraded blu-ray with more storage.

[chocochunks]

Officially? Yes, unfortunately. 4K is even more complicated. Technically 4K is the same discs, but sometimes they use the rare BD-XL 100GB discs that not all drives can read. There's also a bunch of extra DRM junk, so for 4K you need a new drive, new software and an Intel CPU from a specific time period as new ones don't include the bits for 4K Blu-ray DRM.

Unofficially you use MakeMKV and just rip the disc.

EDIT: Oh, apparently PowerDVD no longer supports UHD Blu-ray either so even the official way is dead now.

[keanebean86]

Some drives have modified firmware that helps when ripping.

https://forum.makemkv.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=19

[toomuchtodo]

Any specific drives you’d recommend for ripping?

[dangus]

Anything on their list is fine. I have some random LG slim thing and it works.

The custom firmware allows them to rip 4K blu-rays.

I’m really glad I discovered this because I really didn’t want to spend on a 4K player or a PS5, knowing that this format is really on the way out.

[keanebean86]

I have a LG WP50NB40 but it might be scarce these days. I wanted an external drive. Took about five mins to flash. I've ripped a few recent UHD blurays like the Barbie movie and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness without issues.

[toomuchtodo]

I was able to source from Best Buy, thank you!

[dangus]

Don’t bother with trying to use a player on a computer. Use MakeMKV and a blu-ray drive. Use modified firmware to rip 4K titles. Details can be found on MakeMKV forums.

After you rip them you can re-encode them to save storage space using Handbrake.

Either that or buy a 4K player designed for a TV, like a PS5 or the two most popular Sony and Panasonic players on the market.

- PS5 is a good choice if you need a vertically mounted behind-TV type of setup.

- Sony UBP-X700U is value 4K, just get the updated version which fixes some annoyances of the previous model (I think U is the updated US model)

- Panasonic UB820-K, widely considered to be the best one without spending a thousand bucks.

Overall though, as much as I want blu-ray to be a thing, the market is just dire. I tried to get into it and it’s frustrating.

New release titles often skip blu-ray entirely, especially for demographics that don’t care for the format like kids content. Either that or new titles will skip 4K so you’ll be paying $25 for 1080p when $10 will get you 4K digital. Then when you redeem the movies anywhere code, you don’t get 4K because your blu-ray is only 1080p.

I thought it would be cool to get into some classic 4K upscale cinephile releases like Lawrence of Arabia but it turns out that I can buy the 4K version on Apple TV for like $5 where getting your hands on the disc is like a hundred bucks.

I certainly appreciate the disc releases from outlets like Criterion but $40+ for a movie seems so hard to justify.

The 4K experience on providers like Apple is so excellent, the benefits of blu-ray are so minimal if any at all.

Another random example, my Studio Ghibli transfers on blu-ray are clearly worse quality than HBO Max, and there are no 4K blu-rays except for The Boy and the Heron. There is no motivation to re-do any disc releases of those movies on 4K UHD because nobody is going to buy them.

My feeling is that despite the licensing pitfalls of digital ownership, I’ve concluded that it just makes more sense compared to physical media. Don’t bother with blu-rays. If a license gets revoked from me in the future I’ll just shrug my shoulders and pirate the title.

[account42]

> New release titles often skip blu-ray entirely, especially for demographics that don’t care for the format like kids content. Either that or new titles will skip 4K so you’ll be paying $25 for 1080p when $10 will get you 4K digital. Then when you redeem the movies anywhere code, you don’t get 4K because your blu-ray is only 1080p.

On the other hand, digital DRMed releases will only get you 720p on Linux while MakeMKV with 4K Blu-Rays works just fine. And besides, who would want to watch new releases these days. Also keep in mind that 4K is not the same as 4K - bandwidth matters a lot and streaming providers tend to cheap out there.

It's definitely pricey though but with some patience you can grab even 4K releases at $20-30 and then you'll have that movie (and that specific version of that movie) for as long as you want and not just for however long the streaming service/contracts stay up.

[dangus]

Well, I solve this by using Linux for my computers but I use a commercial streaming box for video.

But you can also solve it by just going the piracy route instead of ripping blu-rays.

> And besides, who would want to watch new releases these days.

Most people. I’m not going to just watch the same content over and over.

> Also keep in mind that 4K is not the same as 4K - bandwidth matters a lot and streaming providers tend to cheap out there.

Honestly, not anymore, not in any way my eyes can detect. Apple TV’s 4K content is given plenty of bandwidth. Vincent from HDTVtest did a comparison and the results are basically identical to 4K Blu-ray. And that’s with a fraction of the hardware cost, basically $0-99 on a streaming box versus a $400 player and a $25-40 disc.

Like I said in my Ghibli example, streaming bandwidth sounds bad in theory but in practice when a movie isn’t even available in 4K on disc and the streaming transfer looks better, streaming is obviously the best way to watch.

The ultimate issue is that there’s no money being invested in a nearly dead format.

As an analogy, I’d really like a minivan or a station wagon instead of an SUV. But if I buy a Volvo V60 or a Honda Odyssey I’m buying a car that hasn’t been redesigned in close to a decade because they’re not popular/profitable enough. In contrast, if I go buy a three row SUV like a Kia Telluride, I’m getting the best 3 row vehicle on the market. This is exactly the predicament the blu-ray market is in. I don’t really want a three row SUV but my hands are tied, I’m not going to buy an inferior vehicle.

For example, Disney isn’t even going to produce their own discs anymore, they’re outsourcing it to Sony. I can’t imagine the quality will be optimal going forward. They are giving the blu-ray market the cable television treatment: they’re making money on the last holdouts and investing nothing into it.

[nikanj]

Babylon 5 has never been easy to watch which is a large factor in the underappreciation. Hard to appreciate something you can’t watch legally

[MrMember]

It's very easy to watch. When I wanted to watch it a few years ago it took only a few minutes to find a torrent of the full series and less than an hour to download.

[roywiggins]

It was easy to watch on Tubi (with ads), though apparently as of very recently it was pulled.

[moffkalast]

I find it hard to believe anyone on this site has a problem with piracy, nor technical nor moral.

[krapp]

You'd be surprised. "Hacker" doesn't mean what it once did, and the spirit of the old hacker culture is all but dead here.

[mystraline]

The "hacker" here is a soulless techbro willing to sell more parts to make a buck. Of course, since he has no more parts of his own, he sells yours. Naturally, theres no permission.

[malfist]

You're going to get flagged to death for saying that. Only lassie faire libertarianism is allowed here. Libertarianism is apolitical you see

[Supermancho]

Tubi stopped carrying all of B5 this month.

B5 has now appeared on Youtube.

Roku has all of B5 - with less commercials than the others

[Throaway1982]

I really enjoyed it until they shoehorned in an attractive human + wierd alien romance to compete with Odo & Kira (barf) on DS9

[wat10000]

Didn’t B5 do it first, by years? Kira/Odo didn’t become an item until B5 was off the air.

[Throaway1982]

my mistake. it still made me stop watching.

[lolive]

Didn't rewatch it for decades. But isn't this romance a very background narrative arc until the very latest season?

[account42]

The "making one of the unique alien main characters look more human to be a better sell as a love interest to the audience" part is unfortunately ever present though. Then again, they already went in that direction between the pilot and the first episode.

[Throaway1982]

^^^

[Throaway1982]

It ruined it for me. I just can't care about two creatures who wouldn't care about each other in a biological sense irl kiss on tv.

[toomuchtodo]

Recommended link to the Blu-ray collection for archival purposes?

[Akronymus]

Also, it seems like piracy is still yhe superior form to watch it over YT because, quite frankly, YT's quality is crap.

[roywiggins]

fwiw the whole thing is free to watch on Tubi and the quality there is very nice.

[nseggert]

It was just pulled from Tubi a few days ago. Still on the Roku channel, though (for now).

[roywiggins]

ah, bummer. The recent-ish HD remaster is gorgeous if a bit incongruous to watch a mid-90s show in perfect detail.

[nephihaha]

It's let down by its effects which even appeared ropey at the time. However, some good storylines.

[Telemakhos]

Having been alive at the time, I can tell you that the effects were amazing then. B5 was one of the first shows to use computer graphics and partially-virtual sets. It wasn't limited by the number of times you could re-composite a handful of models together, so it showed whole armadas of ships. Windows didn't open onto a black felt field of stars but a green screen that allowed ships to pull up right outside the window.

The effects don't hold up to what has followed in the past quarter century, and they weren't preserved in a good resolution, so they'll never look very good on a high-resolution monitor instead of an old CRT. But, at the time, they were amazing.

[fractallyte]

I always felt that Ron Thornton and his team at Foundation Imaging were sadly underrated and overlooked in computer graphics history.

B5's SFX had a dynamism and color that was unmatched at the time. I recently rewatched the series, and the later seasons still hold up just fine, graphics-wise (created by a different company, but reusing Foundation Imaging's original assets and esthetic).

And I love how the Star Fury's design was so carefully thought out - even NASA took an interest.

[nephihaha]

I was an adult at the time. I remember my reactions to the effects, at the time. Most CGI at the time was not good, and Babylon 5 was nowhere near on a par with Terminator 2, say, which had a much bigger budget.

[machomaster]

It's weird to compare the 2 hour movie vs. Tv show with 5 long seasons.

[moron4hire]

Having also been alive at the time, I can tell you I thought the effects looked hokey and cheap.

[HelloMcFly]

It is extremely difficult for me to believe that someone watching Babylon 5 as it aired on a typical sized CRT television thought the effects looked "cheap". Hokey? Okay, maybe, that's subjective enough to be non-debatable. But "cheap" in the context of a television show? The shots were so much more dense and dynamic than what Star Trek was doing at the time, which is the obvious comparison.

It's the season one acting that I find the biggest barrier to entry. It settles in by the end mostly, and the acting markedly improves from Season 2 onward though it always retains some of that campy scifi feel.

[Apocryphon]

The costuming and sets and CGI are impressive, but the lighting is unnecessarily murky and the dark industrial tunnels aesthetic makes me think of Red Dwarf, which I can’t imagine was a very lavish production.

[nephihaha]

The earlier Red Dwarf episodes were filmed in the BBC cafeteria and other similar locations. The difference is that Red Dwarf was supposed to look grimy. They were on a mining ship with few luxuries. Red Dwarf was more in the territory of Dark Star, and played into that. (Early Red Dwarf tended to use physical models and costumes for a lot of effects. CGI has never been especially great on RD.)

I did watch Babylon 5 when it first came out in the UK. Deep Space 9 definitely had better looking effects, but I preferred B5 to DS9 on the basis of other factors.

[gcanyon]

In the space of fifteen years we went from Battlestar Galactica, which used those same shots of Cylon ships swerving and getting blown up over and over and over; to Star Trek: The Next Generation, which used models for the ships and was therefore extremely limited in the scale and maneuvers they could portray; to Babylon V which used digital effects, allowing them a freedom of scale, angle, motion, and number of ships that nothing had managed before -- at the cost of being on the cutting edge of computer graphics, leading to a shininess, over-sharpness, and other telltale computer artifacts.

You can say they were too early, but not that they didn't lean in on technology and use it to their best advantage. It had weaknesses, but also strengths.

[ghaff]

They were pretty good for the budget. (As someone else noted at least a lot were done on Amigas.) I really liked Babylon 5 at the time but there's a lot about it you need to overlook. I recommended it to someone and they told me it was the worst recommendation I ever gave them.

The acting was a mixed bag from very good to pretty wooden. And the whole will it get renewed or won't it situation led to non-optimal organization of the last couple of seasons.

[moron4hire]

"Pretty good for the budget" is not the same thing as "good".

[roywiggins]

Was there much with better effects on TV at the time?

[wat10000]

Star Trek looked much better. They couldn’t do the numbers that B5 could do, at least not until the later parts of DS9. But what they were able to show actually looked realistic. B5’s effects were very, very clearly done on consumer-level computers. They were quite good considering, but didn’t look real. Star Trek was doing things with large physical models and it showed. Ships and stations looked like real objects (since they were!) rather than the smooth curves of everything in B5.

As a young SF devourer at the time, the cheap effects were a major turnoff and one reason I never got into B5.

[nephihaha]

Star Trek at the time had better effects (including DS9, even though I prefer B5!).

The trick with effects is to make whatever you have look good. There are a few ways of doing that. 2001's effects are genius and still look pretty good nearly sixty years later. They look better than 2010's from the 1980s. In fact, I'm even impressed with Forbidden Planet — yes, there are a lot of painted backgrounds but it does very well with what it has.

[alienbaby]

If I remember right, the graphics in early episodes were rendered on commodore amigas