Josh-da-man

I've always wondered why he always sticks "War Zone" near the end when it's chronologically the first episode. I know that it was mandated by TNT and that he hates it, so I'm not sure he even includes it in his viewing order at all. Or just put it at the end with a big asterisk.

slop101

Pretty lame that there's no extras in this new set.
Also, if they're not going to include all the movies, I wish they would've at least included "in the beginning". At least Gathering is in there - bare minimum effort.

kd5

In the Beginning is not included in this new blu-ray set? Why? It contains relevant information to the series. I can see where Thirdspace and River of Souls might not be included. A Call to Arms is important if you're going to follow up with Crusade. But In the Beginning is important to the continuity of the series!

Meathead

The movies were never remastered. Hopefully one day they will be.

Meathead

Currently $87.99 on Amazon.

B5Erik

I finished the first season, and found something I had not expected.

Some pusing flickering with digital noise on some of the live action shots. It's particularly noticeable on the two part A Voice In The Wilderness. Now, I didn't notice it (well, not much) until I watched the two parter at my mom's house on her 10 year old Blu Ray player. At home it's usually barely noticeable.

It also shows up on the first episode of the 2nd season, but on my Sony at home it's usually hard to see.

DJariya

I thought about maybe getting this in the future. But, with no special features. I mean not even a retrospective documentary? It’s a pass from me.

B5Erik

And that pulsing/flickering continues into the 2nd Season. I watched some on Tubi, and it's not there, so this looks like bad authoring for the Blu Ray. I'm not sure what to make of it, as it's somewhat distracting.

B5Erik

I sent an email to Warner's, and they're supposedly going to send me a new set next month.

Hopefully it's newly mastered/authored and not just a replacement assuming that all the discs are somehow defective. We'll see.

PhantomStranger

Quality control on television sets, which was only serviceable even during DVD's halcyon days, has become dreadful as Hollywood's home video departments are slashed to the bone.

Hokeyboy

I haven't watched my set yet but now I'm going to keep an eye open for that. Sheesh.

dvd-4-life

Have you tried watching them on more than one blu ray player?

Josh-da-man

Yeah, in Erik's initial post on the subject he mentioned that he first noticed it on his mother's ten year-old blu-ray player and then on his own Sony player; presumably they're different models.

Occasionally discs will have issues with certain players or brands of players, but this sounds like a mastering/authoring issue and not a defect specific to his discs.

It's also possible that might have something present in the master prints all along that didn't show up until they were converted to 1080p blu-ray. Though he said it's not visible on the Tubi showings, and those are probably from the same recent master.

I do think the most probably cause is a rushed blu-ray authoring since it's showing up on multiple episodes on different discs and seasons. We're talking about 110 episodes of a two-decades old tv show in the waning days of physical media. They aren't putting a lot of effort in these things.

Even when DVD and blu-ray were popular, it wasn't unusual for them to fuck up high profile titles.

The initial release of Doctor Who series six where they somehow screwed up the image where the bottom third of the image had a "noisier"/poorer image quality than the top two-thirds. And that was already in HD.

And there's X-Files Season 8 where the image was mastered too dark.

And the Fellowship of the Ring Extended Edition with the green tint and crushed blacks.

dvd-4-life

I used to use a Panasonic 4k/blu ray player to watch just about everything and the picture quality was poor comparing it later to a Sony 4k/blu ray player.

B5Erik

If you Google Babylon 5 Blu Ray flickering (or a similar search) you'll find that there are several conversations about it online. What I find interesting is that some peope aren't seeing it at all, while for others it's a clear and present problem. Either some of the pressings were bad, or this is a marginal mastering/authoring error that some players have problems with and others don't. As I noted, on my player it wasn't very noticeable, but once I saw it on my mom's old Magnavox Blu Ray player I can't miss it, even on my player where the issue is much more subtle.

It shouldn't have happened, but we've seen mastering/authoring issues with TV season/series sets for decades. You'd think that the studios would want to get these things right to avoid the cost of having to remaster/reauthor them and repress them and send out replacements. But they've always seemed to want to be fast and cheap when it comes to putting these things together.

I'll know more in a few weeks. I've got my fingers crossed.

morriscroy

Is the original encoded bluray video interlaced 1080i or progressive 1080p at 24 or 25 frames per second (fps)?

Iirc, the video on the dvds was some weird admixtured of progressive 24 fps in the film footage, while the graphics fx scenes looked like it was interlaced 25 fps (after reverse telecine is performed)

B5Erik

It's progressive. I don't know what the fps is.

Interestingly, on my Blu Ray set it's the CGI shots that look the best. On the DVD's the CGI shots look awful.

Inhumans99

I have not picked this series up on Blu Ray, or purchased on itunes, but I am watching on Tubi and I presume the PQ, etc., is comprable to what I would get if I watched via itunes. On Tubi the show starts with the episode Midnight On The Firing Line, and I am on Episode 22, Chrysalis. The "0" episode The Gathering is next up to play, I believe.

I have already mentioned that I was at a LosCon (Convention) many years back where Straczynski hosted a panel and talked about the show that would be airing soon, but like other science fiction shows of that time I never watched the episodes when they first aired. Now that I am almost done with the first season, I finally get it, why some folks consider this science fiction series one of if not the best of the bunch, better than Star Trek (at least certain iterations of the Star Trek franchise), Farscape, all those shows like Andromeda, etc..

What makes me go wow at times throughout my watch of the show on Tubi is one, the writing on the show is quite impressive (the dialogue at times is just fantastic), and two, the caliber of acting on the show by the folks who played the main characters and many of the guest appearances were well done and acted by folks who might be one and done on the show but you would not know it by the quality of their performance (the effort they put into making their appearance count).

Many of my faves on the show really are pretty much the main/core cast members, Jerry Doyle is great, Mira Furlan, Peter Jurasik, and Claudia Christian (not just an actress I could see a ton of folks having a TV crush on when the show aired, but she can actually act, lol). I have not yet started viewing the Bruce Boxleitner episodes but I am looking forward to it. The Commander in the first season was good, but I read up on why he left the show in the first season. I hope he got the help he needed.

Josh-da-man

Yeah, you should have watched "The Gathering" first; it's basically the pilot episode and I don't know why Tubi lists it at the end of season one.

If you watch it first, then you see that it sets up all of these mysteries that are slowly revealed during the course of the show -- what happened to Babylon 4, what's inside of Kosh's encounter suit, what happened to Sinclair during his missing hours at The Battle of the Line, why the Minbari surrendered as they were about to defeat Earth. Even after season one, a couple of these questions have at least been partially answered, and more answers will come.

Strap in. The show is about to slip into high gear.

lisadoris

Set is on sale at Amazon for $75. Trying to decide if I should upgrade.

BobO'Link

If you like the series, absolutely upgrade. It looks very, very good, far better than the DVDs, and is finally back in uncropped 4:3 AR. Biggest "downer" is they didn't include any of the movies - well... and that they still don't have the original digital files to be able to remaster for WS properly.

lisadoris

They also ditched all the special features which is my primary concern.

Does the blu box set take up less room than the individual DVD sets?

Meathead

I don't have the blu set but still have the DVDs. Definitely yes... The whole blu set takes less space than 2 of the DVD seasons. (Assuming you can trust Amazon's blu set dimensions )

BobO'Link

I'm not a special features person so that didn't bother me in the least. I was more concerned that the episodes look good.
I can confirm that is correct - it's significantly smaller and, as you said, takes up less space than 2 of the DVD seasons.