When's the Blu-Ray !?

[JoeD80]

So the format wars seem to have ended quite some time ago, and still no news on Babylon 5 on Blu-Ray! What's the deal here? Are they planning to do it at any time? Will they actually pay jms for participation this time around? Is jms only going to let Blu-Ray go through if the feature film is greenlit? Any ideas?

[OmahaStar]

Originally Posted by JoeD80

So the format wars seem to have ended quite some time ago, and still no news on Babylon 5 on Blu-Ray! What's the deal here? Are they planning to do it at any time? Will they actually pay jms for participation this time around? Is jms only going to let Blu-Ray go through if the feature film is greenlit? Any ideas?

Probably never. The CGI was shaky at best for regular dvd. There's no way it can hold up in High Def. They'd have to go back and re-do the whole series in CGI for that. And this is Warner Bros. It won't happen.

[JoeD80]

Originally Posted by OmahaStar

Probably never. The CGI was shaky at best for regular dvd. There's no way it can hold up in High Def.

Why wouldn't it hold up on hi-def? If they can't do anything to the CGI, to my knowledge It would just look exactly the same as it does now on the DVDs played on a hi-def TV, which doesn't look bad to me (but I also never saw the original full-screen versions either).

[Jan]

As far as I know, JMS can't influence the release on Blu-ray one way or another. It's strictly WB's decision.

Jan

[vakie]

DVD's were introduced in 1997, and the B5 DVD's started coming out in 2002, so I'd expect B5 blu-ray's sometime around the first quarter of 2013.

[JoeD80]

Originally Posted by Jan

As far as I know, JMS can't influence the release on Blu-ray one way or another. It's strictly WB's decision.

I didn't figure he had direct influence over it. What I was picturing was a scenario like this: "jms, we want you to oversee all the special features for the Blu-Ray so the fans will buy it." "OK, but only if you fund that feature film!"

[Jan]

Originally Posted by JoeD80

I didn't figure he had direct influence over it. What I was picturing was a scenario like this: "jms, we want you to oversee all the special features for the Blu-Ray so the fans will buy it." "OK, but only if you fund that feature film!"

It's probably the same situation now as it was when JMS posted this message

Because there IS no one Warner Bros. It was constructed as a
series of competing and structurally independent fiefdoms...WB Domestic
TV competes with the WB Network and so on. Each division actively
competes and to a large degree won't *cooperate* with other divisions.

The home video division likely can't influence the features division.

Jan

[Ranger 6 and 7/8]

and remember, the DVD's only came about after JMS and we as fans showed WB there was a market for them. With the DVD sales still going strong, maybe we will see something...Though as has been mentioned not in the foreseeable future...WHile is sucks for us, the suits at WB need to learn the lesson JMS tried to get them to understand before the writer's strike...B5 fans are the most loyal SF fans out there right now and WB could make even more of a killing if they would get their heads out of their...well i'll leave it there

[KoshN]

Originally Posted by OmahaStar

Probably never. The CGI was shaky at best for regular dvd. There's no way it can hold up in High Def.

Because The Sci-Fi Channel wanted a widescreen version and was footing the bill for the conversion, JMS wanted and Warner Home Video (WHV) insisted on making Widescreen DVDs. The original CGI was only rendered in 4:3 (to save render time and $). So, to make Widescreen DVDs, WHV had to enlarge the CGI to cover the 16:9 screenwidth, and that resulted in top & bottom cropping and artifacts (shimmering). If they'd have done 4:3 DVDs, the CGI would have looked better.

Originally Posted by OmahaStar

They'd have to go back and re-do the whole series in CGI for that. And this is Warner Bros. It won't happen.

What he said!

[KoshN]

Originally Posted by Ranger 6 and 7/8

and remember, the DVD's only came about after JMS and we as fans showed WB there was a market for them. With the DVD sales still going strong, maybe we will see something...Though as has been mentioned not in the foreseeable future...WHile is sucks for us, the suits at WB need to learn the lesson JMS tried to get them to understand before the writer's strike...B5 fans are the most loyal SF fans out there right now and WB could make even more of a killing if they would get their heads out of their...well i'll leave it there

But their heads are nice and warm there.

When it comes to B5, Warner Brothers has Altzheimers.

[JoeD80]

Originally Posted by KoshN

WHV had to enlarge the CGI to cover the 16:9 screenwidth, and that resulted in top & bottom cropping and artifacts (shimmering). If they'd have done 4:3 DVDs, the CGI would have looked better.

...

What he said!

Back to my 2nd post -- why would this stop the release? The CGI on the DVDs looks fine (to me at least) on a hi-def TV now. It can't look worse on blu-ray, it would only look as bad as it does now.

[oldjoe5]

Originally Posted by JoeD80

Back to my 2nd post -- why would this stop the release? The CGI on the DVDs looks fine (to me at least) on a hi-def TV now. It can't look worse on blu-ray, it would only look as bad as it does now.

- If all the regular scenes (non-cgi) were transfered, they would look better
- If all the total CGI and CGI-mixed (CGI + regular) were transferred, it would look like crap, possibly even worse than now
- CGI would have to be re-made from scratch due to loss of data, which would be very costly in today's world.

Therefore WB has no incentive to transfer it to blu-ray - no economic and no quality reasons. After all, it's a niche market where quality is king (bar some subpar transfers).

[KoshN]

Originally Posted by JoeD80

Back to my 2nd post -- why would this stop the release? The CGI on the DVDs looks fine (to me at least) on a hi-def TV now. It can't look worse on blu-ray, it would only look as bad as it does now.

So why release it on Blu-Ray, to increase the quality of all of the scenes that include no CGI, and have them make the CGI scenes look even worse in comparison? No, the release would get lambasted by everybody who saw it. People who love Babylon 5 would want a top quality release, not one that further accentuates the CGI problems.

Re-making all of the CGI is completely out of the question. Warner Brothers would NEVER spend the money to even do it half-assed, let alone do it right.

[JoeD80]

Originally Posted by oldjoe5

- If all the total CGI and CGI-mixed (CGI + regular) were transferred, it would look like crap, possibly even worse than now

It's not a "transfer" though. The digital already exists on the DVD. There wouldn't be any degradation from that point.

Originally Posted by KoshN

So why release it on Blu-Ray, to increase the quality of all of the scenes that include no CGI, and have them make the CGI scenes look even worse in comparison? No, the release would get lambasted by everybody who saw it.

I don't think that's true. People pointed out the flaws on the initial DVD release and it still was one of the best selling TV-series. Not enough people really worry about effects quality to affect sales that much.

Originally Posted by KoshN

Re-making all of the CGI is completely out of the question. Warner Brothers would NEVER spend the money to even do it half-assed, let alone do it right.

As I understand it, the only way to do it would be to completely re-do every CGI shot from *scratch*, since all the files were lost. That'd be as expensive as funding another 5-year series.

[oldjoe5]

Originally Posted by JoeD80

It's not a "transfer" though. The digital already exists on the DVD. There wouldn't be any degradation from that point.

What I mean by transfer is a complete new encoding of the original material. Taking the material from the DVD and simply "putting" (ie. re-encoding) it on a bluray yields no results whatsoever.

It's the same thing as taking an episode from the DVD and re-encoding it in a 1080 resolution. Trust me, I have tried this several times, and it does not improve the quality any more than a standard DVD upscaling. You cannot magically improve quality like that, because the source (ie. DVD) is already compressed.

Thus, to reiterate my points:

- If all the regular scenes (non-cgi) were transfered, they would look better
Why? Because you encode the original uncompressed material with a lossless codec such as MPEG4/AVC/VC-1, which are used by bluray movies (MPEG2 is more rarely used, however is not the same as MPEG2 on DVD because of higher bitrates, etc).

- If all the total CGI and CGI-mixed (CGI + regular) were transferred, it would look like crap, possibly even worse than now
Why? Because WB does not have the source of the CGI. Thus they can only transfer what they have now, the compressed CGI renderings. What do I mean, "worse than now"? First of all, putting the standard DVD CGI in HD is like stretching a 853×480 image up to 1920x1080, it does not look particularly good on a big screen. Secondly, if the non-CGI scenes were encoded in HD and coupled with the CGI/mixed-CGI scenes from the DVD, you would have a huuuuuuuuuuuuge discrepancy in quality, making things even worse.