4 ms·

There sadly isn't one. The 4:3 Blu-Ray remasters are about as good as it gets in visual quality, but there's a "cinematic" feel lost from the 16:9 DVDs, but the

There sadly isn't one. The 4:3 Blu-Ray remasters are about as good as it gets in visual quality, but there's a "cinematic" feel lost from the 16:9 DVDs, but the quality difference is noticeable and unfavorable. It's a bit of a dealer's choice at this point if you want "best available quality" or "best available widescreen." Babylon 5 was filmed at a weird moment where they were prescient about HD TV and the coming widescreen home television boom and planned for/shot for 16:9 releases, but also had to shoot and composite first and foremost for 4:3 to meet TVs where they were. They had even had plans to preserve the special FX masters to make it easier to recomposite the show. WB's Archives team lost those files at some point. (The general story is WB Archives sent a copy of the masters to Vivendi [Sierra, proto-Activision Blizzard] for the eventually cancelled videogame and discovered they sent the original copy by accident only after Vivendi claimed to have wiped their copy out of respect for the contract terms when the game was cancelled.)

sinnickal 8mo ago
14⋮9 was used for a while to ease the transition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14%3A9_aspect_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14%3A9_aspect_ratio
M95D 8mo ago
So the version here on youtube is a 16:9 widescreen crop of a 4:3 TV crop of the original 16:9 filming? And the remaining CGI are only the 4:3 crop from the lost 16:9 originals? Did I understand corectly? Then, is there a version somewhere with original uncropped 16:9 live action and 4:3 CGI? I can tolerate side bars. To me, seeing the complete video frame is more important than a consistent frame format.
- WorldMaker 8mo ago
  The original filming was apparently Super 35 [0][1] which is neither 16:9 nor 4:3 but is often cropped to either or both. The show was framed while they were filming it so that they could use the full 16:9 crop (for "cinematic effect"), but the effects were often only composited for the 4:3 crop. (A special few apparently had a chance to be done at the full Super 35 frame, but budget stopped them from doing that with every effects shot.) So yeah the 16:9 crop we did get in the 90s (on TNT on cable and then on DVD) was cropped further from the 4:3 crop, but it mostly worked because the previous framing for the "full" Super 35 16:9 crop allowed for it. Reviewing the helpful Wikipedia diagrams, the 4:3 crop actually uses more overall "volume" of the Super 35 frame than the best 16:9 crop, so I think I appreciate the 4:3 version we have a bit better. I also found this useful visual comparison of the two crops that we have today: https://www.engadget.com/babylon-5-original-4-3-ratio-video-150022687.html https://www.engadget.com/babylon-5-original-4-3-ratio-video-... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_35 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_35 [1] https://www.b5tv.com/threads/explain-the-widescreen-issue-to-me.2018/post-37219 https://www.b5tv.com/threads/explain-the-widescreen-issue-to...
- account42 8mo ago
  > So the version here on youtube is a 16:9 widescreen crop of a 4:3 TV crop of the original 16:9 filming? Only for the pilot (The Gathering), the rest seem to be from the 4:3 remaster which is probably the best version - so both same as the Blu Ray and streaming versions.
M95D 8mo ago
> The 4:3 Blu-Ray remasters are about as good as it gets in visual quality, but there's a "cinematic" feel lost from the 16:9 DVDs, but the quality difference is noticeable and unfavorable. I don't understand what you're trying to say here. What's wrong with the quality difference?
- WorldMaker 8mo ago
  If I recall correctly, the DVDs are 480p. They were very early DVDs and tried to squeeze a bunch of episodes on each disk plus commentary on every episode. The quality jump from 480p to 4K is a big one.

sinnickal 8mo ago

14⋮9 was used for a while to ease the transition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14%3A9_aspect_ratio https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14%3A9_aspect_ratio

M95D 8mo ago

So the version here on youtube is a 16:9 widescreen crop of a 4:3 TV crop of the original 16:9 filming? And the remaining CGI are only the 4:3 crop from the lost 16:9 originals? Did I understand corectly? Then, is there a version somewhere with original uncropped 16:9 live action and 4:3 CGI? I can tolerate side bars. To me, seeing the complete video frame is more important than a consistent frame format.

WorldMaker 8mo ago
The original filming was apparently Super 35 [0][1] which is neither 16:9 nor 4:3 but is often cropped to either or both. The show was framed while they were filming it so that they could use the full 16:9 crop (for "cinematic effect"), but the effects were often only composited for the 4:3 crop. (A special few apparently had a chance to be done at the full Super 35 frame, but budget stopped them from doing that with every effects shot.) So yeah the 16:9 crop we did get in the 90s (on TNT on cable and then on DVD) was cropped further from the 4:3 crop, but it mostly worked because the previous framing for the "full" Super 35 16:9 crop allowed for it. Reviewing the helpful Wikipedia diagrams, the 4:3 crop actually uses more overall "volume" of the Super 35 frame than the best 16:9 crop, so I think I appreciate the 4:3 version we have a bit better. I also found this useful visual comparison of the two crops that we have today: https://www.engadget.com/babylon-5-original-4-3-ratio-video-150022687.html https://www.engadget.com/babylon-5-original-4-3-ratio-video-... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_35 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_35 [1] https://www.b5tv.com/threads/explain-the-widescreen-issue-to-me.2018/post-37219 https://www.b5tv.com/threads/explain-the-widescreen-issue-to...
account42 8mo ago
> So the version here on youtube is a 16:9 widescreen crop of a 4:3 TV crop of the original 16:9 filming? Only for the pilot (The Gathering), the rest seem to be from the 4:3 remaster which is probably the best version - so both same as the Blu Ray and streaming versions.

M95D 8mo ago

> The 4:3 Blu-Ray remasters are about as good as it gets in visual quality, but there's a "cinematic" feel lost from the 16:9 DVDs, but the quality difference is noticeable and unfavorable. I don't understand what you're trying to say here. What's wrong with the quality difference?

WorldMaker 8mo ago
If I recall correctly, the DVDs are 480p. They were very early DVDs and tried to squeeze a bunch of episodes on each disk plus commentary on every episode. The quality jump from 480p to 4K is a big one.