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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

#231

Post by dingaling »

VilleSalonen wrote: post #218
squeedles wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Have we just forgotten the DRM issues with Blu-Ray? I can't even watch them on Linux without relying on leaked keys.

That's why legal unencrypted availability online is such a boon.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#232

Post by krapp »

hollerith wrote: post #214
krapp wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

>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.

That's fair. Tons of scientists and engineers got into their fields because they were inspired by Star Trek.

>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.

Yes. It isn't that potent, though, because it depends on a post-scarcity economy of free energy, FTL and magic boxes that make anything out of nothing. It also assumes humans will just "evolve beyond" their basic nature, bigotry, vice and desire for hierarchies of power.

But for communism (or weakly, socialism) to work in the real world it has to deal with scarcity and human desire.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#233

Post by le-mark »

pimeys wrote: post #189
zelphirkalt wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I watched all of TNG, Voyager and DS9. To me DS9 will always be behind the other ST series. I felt like it was a bit too much of the social stuff, maybe because it plays mostly on a station instead of an exploration vessel, but I guess that is exactly what people like about it. The characters and their development and so on. I liked the Garak character for example, but disliked Zisko being some chosen one for the wor…

We recently watched all the 80's and 90's Star Trek for the first time. So it's really interesting to compare the series' from the modern perspective. TNG is a classic, with the classic crew and after the first hiccups is some of the best scifi of all time. Absolutely great actors and amazing writing. DS9 is the weird one. I do really enjoy the trajectory of many of its characters: Sisko, Odo, Bashir, Dax (one of my…

You should try the stargate series next if you haven’t. They supplanted Star Trek in my pantheon. There are also some time travel series more recently that are also quite enjoyable; Travelers and Continuum.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#234

Post by arunix »

potamic wrote: post #62
jeffwask wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I rewatched it last year during an old sci-fi binge, I had watched bits as a kid but never got it. I grew up on TNG and DS9 was my favorite, so I was probably biased. It's probably now number 2 for me behind DS9. I watched it again a few month later to catch all the foreshadowing I missed the first time. You are spot on that season 1 is a slow burn that ramps up to the amazing seasons 3 and 4. Best part, it has a cle…

Can someone who is new to Star trek start with DS9 or need to watch earlier series for context?

TNG introduced various civilisations that drive much of the plot in DS9.

Season 1: Ferengi

Season 4: Trill, Cardassians

Season 5: Bajorans

Also, Chief O'Brien and his wife Keiko who were recurring minor characters in TNG have more important roles in DS9.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#235

Post by crtasm »

wartywhoa23 wrote: post #156
prmoustache wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do we really need to upscale everything? I don't think image quality really is an important thing to enjoy old movies / series as long as the story is good.

Just wait, they'll soon demand that their favorite soap operas be AI-restarted to generate slop streams indefinitely, and will throw their hard-sat-on-a-sofa UBI credits at that. - Hey, have you watched that Game of Thrones S1723E1122? - Nope, I'm not paying until they upscale it to 64K!

Give me new Nothing, Forever in 480p and I'll be a happy man.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing,_Forever

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#236

Post by wat10000 »

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 B5 do it first, by years? Kira/Odo didn’t become an item until B5 was off the air.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#237

Post by wat10000 »

iso1631 wrote: post #150
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…

> 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’m not going to spend a hundred bucks to try a series I may not even like. It would be one thing if I loved it and wanted to watch it again, or if I had seen enough to know that I want to watch it all. But that’s a lot of money for an unknown quantity.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#238

Post by wat10000 »

cosmic_cheese wrote: post #178
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 think the aversion to subscribing to a streaming service for a single series has more to do with the recurring nature of the subscription than it does the price. You have to remember to cancel it when you’re done, which is easy to forget with so many things bring for our attention these days. That $10 could easily multiply several times over if it slips your mind, at which point congratulations, you’ve paid a signi…

As if they want to help people sign up for short periods of time. You might as well suggest drug dealers sell non-addictive crack.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#239

Post by wat10000 »

roywiggins wrote: post #225
moron4hire wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having also been alive at the time, I can tell you I thought the effects looked hokey and cheap.

Was there much with better effects on TV at the time?

Star Trek looked much better. They couldn’t do the numbers that B5 could do, at least not until the later parts of DS9. But what they were able to show actually looked realistic. B5’s effects were very, very clearly done on consumer-level computers. They were quite good considering, but didn’t look real. Star Trek was doing things with large physical models and it showed. Ships and stations looked like real objects (since they were!) rather than the smooth curves of everything in B5.

As a young SF devourer at the time, the cheap effects were a major turnoff and one reason I never got into B5.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#240

Post by AnotherGoodName »

It's so weird how many good shows are not on any of the platforms. So much of what the platforms create is utter crap. Yet there's amazing shows only available on DVD.

Recently bought and watched the Hornblower series. Amazing. Star Trek like atmosphere, exploration of new worlds etc (the show has less violence and a lot more good intentions than reality which i prefer in my times of relaxation), on a ship during the Napoleonic wars. Amazing. All the episodes of the miniseries are ~8 on imdb, deservedly so.

Yet you wouldn't know this excellent series existed based on what the platforms show.

Sharpe's another good one. I'm guessing there's bias against non-US made content but as someone not from the UK or the US wow what a blindspot!

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