Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Advice from Axiom Owners Bab5

Anyone have the Babylon 5 box set(s)? I just started watching Season 2, and I'm not noticing a lot of use of surrounds or a lot of surrounding effect from them when they are going. Just wondering if it's a quirk of the disk or a quirk of my setup. I'm guessing the disk since it's a remaster of DPL. It seems that CSI:NY works well with the surrounds, as well.


No, I still haven't played any pure DD or DTS movies...

B5 junkie, so I've got'em all- even Crusade!

I do get some surround effects, even some pretty good "whooshes" from front to rear,but like most 2.0 sources they didn't do any enhancement/remixing that I can hear, just dumped the ProLogic tracks to DD.

I was actually shocked at the low quality of the B5 DVD's in general (although this wasn't apparent until I got a 65" TV)

Still, things like ST:TOS and even the British U.F.O. from the 60's are stunningly clear, so this tells me that they made the B5 DVD's as cheaply as possible- over-compressed and under-tweaked.

By the way, there is a new B5 feature film in the works, in case you weren't aware- starts filming in April, current rumor has them replacing key cast members, including Peter Woodward (Galen, the best thing about Crusade).

I've never seen Crusade and I've probably never seen season 2, half of season 3, or any of season 5. I'm a junkie, but not a particularly devoted one! I saw what you meant about the quality of the transfers, and there's a lot of pixelization in the special effects (although that could just be the special effects!). Oh well, it's all about the story for me. Man, that first episode of season 2 has some bombshells!

1st episode of S2, Damn you ain't seen nothing yet!
Great series, I have all the discs except for Crusade.
There's reasons for the bad video quality:
The film stock was not very well handled or stored by WB [who new the dvd sales would net them half a BILLION $?], in fact some of the film stock for the pilot was EATEN BY RATS.
The live-action was shot on Super35 film with widescreen presentation in mind, but they only had the tech/money to do the effects in 4:3.
Hence all computer generated shots, including composite shots (with special effects + actors) have been cropped and zoomed in on for the widescreen dvd release.
But don't let that spoil your enjoyment of the beauty and artistry of the cgi: the unique and distinctive ship designs and the full 3 dimensional use of space.
There wasn't much effort put into the audio mix for the dvd's. Many times, sound effects or walla that could have been placed in the surround channels, are coming from the center/fronts. Chris Franke's magnificent score does come through nicely and there is some decent LFE during the battles in later seasons.
The thunderclaps in episode 402 are particluarly good.

Cool... I got most of the major plot highlights from season 4 when I was watching it on TV, but it's really cool to go back and see where things came from. Unfortunately, The Gathering is still a really dull episode. In the Beginning, on the other hand, is incredible.