BABYLON 5 REMASTERED FINALLY AVAILABLE!

[Usagi Pilgrim]

‘Babylon 5 Remastered’ now available to buy or stream on HBO Max | Engadget

Nearly thirty years after it first aired, and twenty years after its troubled DVD release, Babylon 5 is getting a polish as part of its release on HBO Max..

www.engadget.com

 

[Riceball]

Ah man, just as my trial subscription to HBO Max ended.

 

[Usagi Pilgrim]

Ah man, just as my trial subscription to HBO Max ended.

You can still purchase the digital version.

 

[Apollo]

Did’nt believe it untill they confirmed it just now

ABOUT TIME!!

 

[Riceball]

You can still purchase the digital version.

That's good to know but I prefer physical media when it comes to TV shows and movies.

 

[Don93]

Love Babylon 5!!!!!

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I went from YES to reading "On HBO Max", aw.... Are these real remasters or just half*ss versions? From all I've read JMS has said that there's at least one big shot at WB who needs to die (in that execs' own words) before anything will move with the B5 property. I think it's one of the most wasted IPs in the last 30 years. It should have an expanded universe like SW does with games, books, shows, etc.

 

[Usagi Pilgrim]

I went from YES to reading "On HBO Max", aw.... Are these real remasters or just half*ss versions? From all I've read JMS has said that there's at least one big shot at WB who needs to die (in that execs' own words) before anything will move with the B5 property. I think it's one of the most wasted IPs in the last 30 years. It should have an expanded universe like SW does with games, books, shows, etc.

According to the article, the show was scanned & remastered in 4K, dirt & noise was cleaned up, it was color corrected, then 'dumbed down' to HD. Then the FX shots were upgraded to HD with 'minor adjustments' when necessary.

 

[Riceball]

According to the article, the show was scanned & remastered in 4K, dirt & noise was cleaned up, it was color corrected, then 'dumbed down' to HD. Then the FX shots were upgraded to HD with 'minor adjustments' when necessary.

I was under the impression that the effects couldn't be upgraded because they were originally rendered at (what's now) low res and they don't have clean masters without the effects already comped in.

 

[Usagi Pilgrim]

I was under the impression that the effects couldn't be upgraded because they were originally rendered at (what's now) low res and they don't have clean masters without the effects already comped in.

I'd heard that as well, but I was going by what the article said. Here's the exact quote...

 

[AnubisGuard]

The article's subtitle says the CGI is upscaled:

 

[The Terminator]

All these reports and no comparisons between them?

 

[Lissavi]

At the end of the week, Warner Brothers will have the series available on HBOMAX. Nice!

 

[Riceball]

I'm guessing that all of the live action sequences with no CG in them will look great but any shot with CG in it won't look all that much better than when B5 first aired. I think that you can only upscale old '90s era CG so much, no unless you have access to the original files that is. Then you can truly upscale everything and redo all of the shots, including redoing the composite shots.

 

[Mr. E Man]

Upscaling has greatly improved recently with AI-powered applications. But, they couldn't go back to the original Lightwave files and re-render them again at a higher resolution?
When I work on projects that contain CG elements, EVERYTHING gets archived. I would hope that this practice was in place when the show was produced, even though several CG companies were ultimately involved with the production of the show. You would think that someone would have backups of the files that could be repurposed.


E

 

[AnubisGuard]

They probably do, but all of that takes time and money and WB may not have felt it was worth the extra expense. The models and textures would probably need to be reworked at a higher resolution too, and it's possible the tapes are lost, corrupt, or in some old format they can't even read any more. Where I work, we have bins and bins of tapes from 10+ years ago that we couldn't restore from even if we wanted to because the compatible hardware is long gone from our facility.

 

[Riceball]

Upscaling has greatly improved recently with AI-powered applications. But, they couldn't go back to the original Lightwave files and re-render them again at a higher resolution?
When I work on projects that contain CG elements, EVERYTHING gets archived. I would hope that this practice was in place when the show was produced, even though several CG companies were ultimately involved with the production of the show. You would think that someone would have backups of the files that could be repurposed.


E

From what I've read, it's a combination of the original files being lost and not clean masters to work with. All they have are masters that have all of the effects already comped in, no raw green/blue screen masters. If that is indeed the case, the best they could do is completely rework and replace all of the space shots where there are no live action elements and edit them back in. With the parts where there's a combination of live action and CG, like interior shots of B5, they could still replace the CG elements but it would require, in addition to new CG elements, going in and creating mattes for compositing by rotoscoping all of the live action elements. It's definitely doable, it's done a fair amount in current movies and shows, but it is time consuming and thus expensive.

 

[Cephus]

That's good to know but I prefer physical media when it comes to TV shows and movies.

I already have it all on DVD. I would never buy anything digitally, where it can vanish when the company goes under.

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

I'd maybe buy a new Bluray version or something, but honestly the originals on DVD don't look that bad. They are obviously a product of the period they were made in, but it's still watchable. The problem I have with my DVD sets is I remember one of the first seasons has a disc where the scene just stops and hangs and you can't do anything except restart the dvd and go to the next scene.

 

[Lost in Trek]

At the end of the week, Warner Brothers will have the series available on HBOMAX. Nice!

It's available now on HBOmax