[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.