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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

#241

Post by [deleted] »

krapp wrote: post #232
hollerith wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>>[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…

[deleted]

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#242

Post by toomuchtodo »

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…

Recommended link to the Blu-ray collection for archival purposes?

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#243

Post by throwaway2046 »

bjackman wrote: post #121
tracker1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just found the acting in the first season really, "soap opera" like. I'm not sure how to describe it better. It's still one of my all time favorite shows. I wish they'd do a corrected bluray release with even a bit more effort... when they did the upscaling for HD release on HBO Max, they messed up a couple episodes. Maybe AI upscale to 4k, with training data for newer ship models, actor photos, etc then reducing b…

I think weird acting styles can be part of the joy of watching older media. Seems like films mostly switched over to "modern" acting in the 70s (?) and TV had a lot more variety in style (and quality lol) way up into the "modern era". I'm not gonna say "it's not worse it's just different", coz TBH... It's worse lol. If modern acting was a rare minority style of practice I would seek it out voraciously. But, for the v…

> Seems like films mostly switched over to "modern" acting in the 70s

Can you elaborate on this point? I think I agree with you, I just don't know why.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#245

Post by Silhouette »

prmoustache wrote: post #147
tracker1 wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just found the acting in the first season really, "soap opera" like. I'm not sure how to describe it better. It's still one of my all time favorite shows. I wish they'd do a corrected bluray release with even a bit more effort... when they did the upscaling for HD release on HBO Max, they messed up a couple episodes. Maybe AI upscale to 4k, with training data for newer ship models, actor photos, etc then reducing b…

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.

If you watch the popular streaming services on a Linux PC then you'll be lucky to get more than 720p and some only seem to provide SD anyway - even for content from the HD era. This despite obviously having access to more detailed versions that they'll serve you for the same money if you watch on one of their preferred platforms.

IME this becomes quite jarring if you're watching on a modern high-res screen - even something like a quarter-sized browser window or PIP on a 4K monitor - with other much sharper content visible nearby. If you're watching either full-screen or in a smaller window but without other more detailed visuals around it then personally I find it less jarring and I can still become immersed if the material itself is good. It's still noticeable if you're used to watching HD or 4K content on other devices but I'd rather watch something good in SD than not watch it. The same goes for old shows that were only made in SD originally.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#246

Post by te7447 »

le-mark wrote: post #233
pimeys wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Travelers definitely has a very distinct "seat-of-your-pants" form of plotting, though, that can seem inconsistent if you're used to something more consistently planned in advance like Babylon 5. Two big changes during S1 also made me bounce off it.

I won't claim my taste is universal: it's just something to be aware of.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#248

Post by rabf »

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…

You know, AI might actually be able to fix this!

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#249

Post by mindslight »

pwg wrote: post #211
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.

Nope.

> ERROR: [youtube] Y235YEQstLo: Sign in to confirm you’re not a bot. Use --cookies-from-browser or --cookies for the authentication. See https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/FAQ#how-do-i-pass-cook... for how to manually pass cookies. Also see https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/wiki/Extractors#exporting-y... for tips on effectively exporting YouTube cookies

That's the latest version of yt-dlp, just downloaded. I tried from two different IPs, both actually also having signed-in Google sessions (so not even really trying to hide).

As always with the surveillance industry, your experience may vary. I'm sure there are workarounds - less-hassled IPs you can get access through, etc. The point is that going for the straightforward libre software solution lets you avoid playing any of those constantly-churning games to begin with. It's much nicer to use software systems that straightforwardly work in your interests, rather than having to trick adversarial systems.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#250

Post by IshKebab »

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…

Yeah 100% this. I want to watch Endeavour without ads, and I couldn't get some of it on Bittorrent (which is a first). It's available on ITVX for a subscription but there's literally nothing else I want to watch on there and I don't want to deal with cancellation & time pressure to watch it all.

I did consider buying a Blu-ray player and buying it on Blu-ray but it seems like they never actually released all the series on Blu-ray.

In the end I ended up figuring out how to download it without ads from ITVX. There's a tool which will bypass Widevine, download all the segments and splice them together without ads. Quite a pain to get working but still less annoying than yet another subscription. We already have Netflix, Disney, Prime, and a TV license.

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