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Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

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Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#211

Post by pwg »

mindslight wrote: post #24

Why would I want to mess with using a web browser for video in my living room, probably getting hassled over its (lack of) digital restrictions management lockdown, signing into a Google account with all of the surveillance pwnage that implies, ads (including ads for senile political ragebait) plastered all over my experience, while becoming dependent on a UI that can change at any time, likely to demand money? Youtu…

> Why would I want to mess with using a web browser for video in my living room

No need for all that. Just use yt-dlp (https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp) to download them as video files, and then just play the video files as you would any other video file.

Just tested yt-dlp on s1e1 to verify it worked, and it worked perfectly to download the video.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#212

Post by lolive »

Throaway1982 wrote: post #208
dizzy9 wrote: post #133

Excellent news. Babylon 5 is underappreciated, but it has mainly good episodes and several amazing ones.[0] However, if I can be cynical for a moment: The article title is misleading. Only a few episodes have been uploaded so far. At the current rate of one episode per week, it will take until March 2028 to conclude all five seasons. That's assuming they post every episode, and allow the episodes to remain up in the…

I really enjoyed it until they shoehorned in an attractive human + wierd alien romance to compete with Odo & Kira (barf) on DS9

Didn't rewatch it for decades. But isn't this romance a very background narrative arc until the very latest season?

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#213

Post by pwg »

mindslight wrote: post #31
serf wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

okay, then be happy there will be some new injected life into the fandom or re-read the release as "B5 now available for download via YT-DLP for free!"

Sure, there is value to corporate top-down synchronization telling everyone to focus on a specific piece of media at the same time. I wasn't really complaining about that. In fact it would be interesting if we could recreate the effect some way in a more distributed culture. But no, in my experience yt-dlp no longer just works unless you make your identity legible to Google (eg naive residential IP or supplying a log…

> But no, in my experience yt-dlp no longer just works unless you make your identity legible

You need to upgrade your yt-dlp then. The newest versions still work without any session cookies or other such nonsense.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#214

Post by hollerith »

krapp wrote: post #206
layer8 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TNG, because it’s about the future, about science, rationality, open-mindedness and new perspectives, whereas B5 is really about the past (and present), about politics, recurrence and mysticism. It’s a bit like which do you prefer, science-fiction or fantasy? Much of B5 could have been done in a pure fantasy setting.

TNG isn't actually about science, though. There is precious little actual science in the series, or even the franchise as a whole. Ironically the most scientifically grounded series is TOS because they didn't have a ton of franchise tropes to lean on and actually hired science fiction writers now and then. I remember one episode where they encountered a (Romulan?) cloaking device for the first time, a major plot poin…

>>[I prefer] TNG because it’s about the future, about science, rationality, open-mindedness and new perspectives

>TNG isn't actually about science

I agree with your point that Star Trek is very bad at being scientifically realistic (e.g., in its plots) but Star Trek -- at least TOS and TNG -- was very good at creating positive feelings about scientific and technological progress.

Technological progress is one of the few things that large numbers of people have become so enthusiatic about that it becomes a sort of lens through which they decide the goodness or badness of almost everything that happens. Jesus and dismantling capitalism and other forms of oppression are two other examples.

In other words, the first two Star Trek shows (i.e., the shows that Roddenberry exerted direct control over) seemed to have been extremely good at attracting people to the technophilic ideology.

(TNG is also a potent advertisement for communist ideology: Roddenberry was at the time interested in communism and insisted that money was absent (or rare and unimportant) inside the Federation and that crime and strife between people had mostly been eliminated.)

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#215

Post by gspetr »

chasil wrote: post #87
tomkarho wrote: post #30

Those who come to this magnificent piece of Sci-Fi for the first time, a word of advice: Pay attention. There are things set in motion in season 1 that are resolved multiple seasons later and there's a lot of foreshadowing (pun very much intended) both subtle and overt. Oh and, enjoy the ride. It's a good one.

The primary thing to know is that the actor who played Sinclair in season one, Michael O'Hare, suffered from mental illness. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_O%27Hare His treatments were only partially successful. He reappeared in a cameo appearance early in season two ("The Coming of Shadows") and returned in season three for a two-part episode ("War Without End") which closed his character's story arc. At that…

You should delete the spoilers. O'Hare's personal history is important, but the part of the comment about his chronological appearances in the show is not.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#216

Post by 1970-01-01 »

dizzy9 wrote: post #133

Excellent news. Babylon 5 is underappreciated, but it has mainly good episodes and several amazing ones.[0] However, if I can be cynical for a moment: The article title is misleading. Only a few episodes have been uploaded so far. At the current rate of one episode per week, it will take until March 2028 to conclude all five seasons. That's assuming they post every episode, and allow the episodes to remain up in the…

Without understanding the motive behind it, you should assume it is not good news. You're right to be skeptical of the upload count. All they're doing is sheltering the show on YouTube until the view counters rise to the point of another streaming service making a charitable offer. Then, poof all episodes are moved to another service without notice.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#218

Post by VilleSalonen »

squeedles wrote: post #163
iso1631 wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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 futu…

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...

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#219

Post by Groxx »

dizzy9 wrote: post #133

Excellent news. Babylon 5 is underappreciated, but it has mainly good episodes and several amazing ones.[0] However, if I can be cynical for a moment: The article title is misleading. Only a few episodes have been uploaded so far. At the current rate of one episode per week, it will take until March 2028 to conclude all five seasons. That's assuming they post every episode, and allow the episodes to remain up in the…

Yeah, so far I see mislabeled-pilot, and episodes 3 and 4.

That... does not (currently) look like "Babylon 5 is now free to watch". That looks like a minor probing to see if they can charge for it again somewhere. That kind of thing happens constantly, and it's rare that it ever finishes.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#220

Post by mystraline »

krapp wrote: post #209
moffkalast wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe anyone on this site has a problem with piracy, nor technical nor moral.

You'd be surprised. "Hacker" doesn't mean what it once did, and the spirit of the old hacker culture is all but dead here.

The "hacker" here is a soulless techbro willing to sell more parts to make a buck. Of course, since he has no more parts of his own, he sells yours. Naturally, theres no permission.
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