The original episodes were all recorded in wide aspect ratio, even though they were destined for broadcast TV. They were touted as future compatibility. So the original broadcasts were "pan & scan". Then, when the wide-aspect disc formats arrived, it turned out that converting them was not a simple matter of going back to the originals and plopping them on disc.

https://b5remasterissues.wordpress.com/the-good/

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account42 a day ago | parent | next [-]

Only the live action shots were recorded with a wide aspect ratio, and perhaps not even that for the pilot. The CGI was rendered in 4:3 and the final cuts including transitions and VFX where composited in 4:3.

The remaster combines cropped 4:3 but high resolution scans of the original live action footage with (sometimes badly) upscaled versions of CGI and VFX'd shots -- except for the pilot which is fully upscaled and cropped from the original 4:3 broadcast masters with zero high resolution live action footage. I don't know if the pilot footage was actually shot widescreen but if it was then you don't get any of it in the "widescreen" pilot included in the remastered versions.

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Apocryphon a day ago | parent [-]

So just what is the optimal way to watch this show

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WorldMaker a day ago | parent | next [-]

There sadly isn't one. The 4:3 Blu-Ray remasters are about as good as it gets in visual quality, but there's a "cinematic" feel lost from the 16:9 DVDs, but the quality difference is noticeable and unfavorable. It's a bit of a dealer's choice at this point if you want "best available quality" or "best available widescreen."

Babylon 5 was filmed at a weird moment where they were prescient about HD TV and the coming widescreen home television boom and planned for/shot for 16:9 releases, but also had to shoot and composite first and foremost for 4:3 to meet TVs where they were. They had even had plans to preserve the special FX masters to make it easier to recomposite the show. WB's Archives team lost those files at some point. (The general story is WB Archives sent a copy of the masters to Vivendi [Sierra, proto-Activision Blizzard] for the eventually cancelled videogame and discovered they sent the original copy by accident only after Vivendi claimed to have wiped their copy out of respect for the contract terms when the game was cancelled.)

	▲	sinnickal 7 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		14⋮9 was used for a while to ease the transition. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/14%3A9_aspect_ratio
	▲	M95D 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev \| next [-]
		So the version here on youtube is a 16:9 widescreen crop of a 4:3 TV crop of the original 16:9 filming? And the remaining CGI are only the 4:3 crop from the lost 16:9 originals? Did I understand corectly? Then, is there a version somewhere with original uncropped 16:9 live action and 4:3 CGI? I can tolerate side bars. To me, seeing the complete video frame is more important than a consistent frame format.
	▲	M95D 7 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		> The 4:3 Blu-Ray remasters are about as good as it gets in visual quality, but there's a "cinematic" feel lost from the 16:9 DVDs, but the quality difference is noticeable and unfavorable. I don't understand what you're trying to say here. What's wrong with the quality difference?

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yrro 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Take it from someone who saw it when it first aired on standard definition analogue TV: it doesn't really matter all that much. The performance of the actors and the story is what's important!

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assaddayinh 18 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

With an AI filter overlay of the cgi sequences?

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jeffwask a day ago | parent | prev [-]

DS9 and Voy have the same issue. For DS9, Season 1 was shot wide screen compatible then they switched to 16:9 but none of the effects are widescreen ready.