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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

#361

Post by account42 »

beloch wrote: post #122
stuxnet79 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a DS9 fan myself I felt like B5 was the better show. DS9 had greater variance throughout its run, the standout episodes were phenomenal but also lots of weak episodes & filler. If there was tighter editorial control over the episodes & at least 30% of them got cut then it could be a contender.

DS9 and B5 came out at roughly the same time and shared a similar concept: The (mis)adventures of the crew of a bustling space station. The divergence from there is extreme. DS9 very quickly brought in the Defiant so that its characters could escape the station and go on more traditional Star Trek adventures. The station was home base, but the crew got out a lot. It typically felt like the station was well under cont…

> Continuity between episodes is normal now. Everyone is used to shows that play out as one long narrative instead of hitting the reset button every week.

It actually feels more like most shows make things up along the way for each episode or at least each season, always trying to one up previous universe-shattering changes in order to give the audience their dopamine hit. While the continuity was well done in B5 it's been mostly a disaster for the industry afterwards.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#362

Post by account42 »

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?

Depends. I think it's worth starting with The Original Series because the older trek as aged just as well as DS9 if not even better and that way you get the whole context that people who watched these shows at the time did.

But all the star trek series are self contained enough that you don't really need to have seen the previous ones.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#363

Post by account42 »

eafkuor wrote: post #74
jefc1111 wrote: post #6

If you decide to watch Babylon 5 for the first time, I suggest giving it a chance to get under your skin. There is quite a lot to get in the way of that such as mediocre acting, cringey humour, low budget fx (all particularly prominent in season 1). But the pay off in seasons 3 and 4 is huge if you take the time to let affection grow for the characters. Babylon 5 was my first 'favourite series' that 'changed my life'…

> But the pay off in seasons 3 and 4 Having to suffer through two mediocre seasons is a dealbreaker in 2026 to be honest.

Chasing instant gratification is not a healthy way to live.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#364

Post by account42 »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #295
Dove wrote: post #278

We quote Babylon 5 on an approximately daily basis in this house. Definitely my favorite sci fi series. Well, that and Firefly. B5 won not one, but two Hugos, which were highly deserved. Whenever I get the itch to watch the whole thing again but I don't want to spend the time, I watch this (which is so thick with spoilers that you shouldn't watch it unless you've seen the series so many times that the Vorlons make se…

Hmm, the Vorlons were mysterious for most of the series but I thought it was clear by the end they simply craved order. ;-)

I think they were perhaps the aspect that suffered the most from the originally planned S4 and S5 being condensed into one season.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#365

Post by iso1631 »

IshKebab wrote: post #250
cosmic_cheese wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 seri…

So ITV don't get any money, so they stop making this stuff

They gave you an option to pay for it without adverts, but you decided to invest your time and energy in bypassing the adverts rather than pay the cost of a pint of beer. You could have paid for it on Apple TV but perhaps you consider it too expensive.

How much do you value an episode? Presumably enough to watch it - so 90 minutes of your time, which at minimum wage is £18. But you don't value it £4 to watch a 90 minute program just once on apple tv, let alone how cheap itvx is.

Justify it to yourself all you want, just don't cry when TV series like that are no longer made.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#366

Post by dangus »

account42 wrote: post #345
dangus wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don’t bother with trying to use a player on a computer. Use MakeMKV and a blu-ray drive. Use modified firmware to rip 4K titles. Details can be found on MakeMKV forums. After you rip them you can re-encode them to save storage space using Handbrake. Either that or buy a 4K player designed for a TV, like a PS5 or the two most popular Sony and Panasonic players on the market. - PS5 is a good choice if you need a vertic…

> New release titles often skip blu-ray entirely, especially for demographics that don’t care for the format like kids content. Either that or new titles will skip 4K so you’ll be paying $25 for 1080p when $10 will get you 4K digital. Then when you redeem the movies anywhere code, you don’t get 4K because your blu-ray is only 1080p. On the other hand, digital DRMed releases will only get you 720p on Linux while MakeM…

Well, I solve this by using Linux for my computers but I use a commercial streaming box for video.

But you can also solve it by just going the piracy route instead of ripping blu-rays.

> And besides, who would want to watch new releases these days.

Most people. I’m not going to just watch the same content over and over.

> Also keep in mind that 4K is not the same as 4K - bandwidth matters a lot and streaming providers tend to cheap out there.

Honestly, not anymore, not in any way my eyes can detect. Apple TV’s 4K content is given plenty of bandwidth. Vincent from HDTVtest did a comparison and the results are basically identical to 4K Blu-ray. And that’s with a fraction of the hardware cost, basically $0-99 on a streaming box versus a $400 player and a $25-40 disc.

Like I said in my Ghibli example, streaming bandwidth sounds bad in theory but in practice when a movie isn’t even available in 4K on disc and the streaming transfer looks better, streaming is obviously the best way to watch.

The ultimate issue is that there’s no money being invested in a nearly dead format.

As an analogy, I’d really like a minivan or a station wagon instead of an SUV. But if I buy a Volvo V60 or a Honda Odyssey I’m buying a car that hasn’t been redesigned in close to a decade because they’re not popular/profitable enough. In contrast, if I go buy a three row SUV like a Kia Telluride, I’m getting the best 3 row vehicle on the market. This is exactly the predicament the blu-ray market is in. I don’t really want a three row SUV but my hands are tied, I’m not going to buy an inferior vehicle.

For example, Disney isn’t even going to produce their own discs anymore, they’re outsourcing it to Sony. I can’t imagine the quality will be optimal going forward. They are giving the blu-ray market the cable television treatment: they’re making money on the last holdouts and investing nothing into it.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#367

Post by WorldMaker »

JLO64 wrote: post #273
WorldMaker wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The CW picked up a Babylon 5 reboot "recently", but it seems like it got trapped in development hell and caught in the cross-fires of the ugly WB-CBS divorce of The CW and the ugly merger of WB and Discovery and what is shaping up to be an ugly divorce of WB and Discovery.

I thought that project got turned into the animated film that got released not too long back? I got the impression JMS was done with B5 after he went back to focusing on comics again with his run on Captain America.

The animated film was said to be a side-by-side project from different budgets (WB Animation versus The CW/WB Television Studios).

I think at this point JMS is trying to keep a diverse income and still do comics as well as TV projects. Even during Sense8, with its Netflix-sized budget, he had comics irons in the fire.

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#368

Post by mathgeek »

JdeBP wrote: post #337
mathgeek wrote: post #332

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where is your source for that? Would love to read anything and everything BTS on B5.

Then go to Midwinter, the home of The Lurker's Guide to Babylon 5, and prepare to be absorbed for days.

Oh for sure, love it. I just hadn’t seen the above before and thought maybe a new source!

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#369

Post by toomuchtodo »

keanebean86 wrote: post #304
toomuchtodo wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any specific drives you’d recommend for ripping?

I have a LG WP50NB40 but it might be scarce these days. I wanted an external drive. Took about five mins to flash. I've ripped a few recent UHD blurays like the Barbie movie and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness without issues.

I was able to source from Best Buy, thank you!

Re: Babylon 5 is now free to watch on YouTube

#370

Post by Throaway1982 »

account42 wrote: post #348
lolive wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

The "making one of the unique alien main characters look more human to be a better sell as a love interest to the audience" part is unfortunately ever present though. Then again, they already went in that direction between the pilot and the first episode.

^^^
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