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Season 2 First Thoughts

Z

zantarous

Regular
I have only had time to view one episode this evening due to
a) a server going down at work
b) Buffy and Angle air on Thursday nights back to back in the UK.

Lets get the bad news out of the way first:

Still no groove on the slip case to make getting the pack out easier;

The wrong title sequence has been used for points of departure (for those of you who do not know what I mean don't ask there is a spoiler involved);

Oh and the transfer....








For those of you who were hoping for a better quality transfer from Season 1 are going to be disappointed. There were lots of scratches on the episode, even a vertical and horizontal line showing up on two occasions. The dreaded grain factor is still there, however it seems to fluctuate between scenes. I cannot decide if it is on a par with the later episodes of season 1 or not. Hopefully it will improve latter in the season.

I must point out that I thought that the later episodes of season 1 looked very good on my recently purchased 36” widescreen (PAL discs) so I am wondering if it down to dodgy NTSC mastering.

I did notice while skimming through the special features (oh no mention of the gag reel anywhere by the way although I did not spend much time searching) clips of the show appeared in non anamorphic mode and I have to say they looked very crisp and clear?

Sound on the other hand is up to the standard of the first set ie quite good, even more pleasant was the fact that during the special intro by JMS and various cast and crew members the stereo track in pro logic the music was very active on the rear speakers, a nice touch.

And for any of those who have not seen Divided Loyalties DO NOT watch the intro on disc one as it contains a spoiler.

On the pleasant side I did not think Mir Furlan, Andrea Thompson or Peter Jurasik were taking part in giving interviews so I was surprised to see this. I should really pay more attention on what is going on in the various threads.

Oh and one more gripe, and this may down to my set up or the discs have not been properly flagged, there seems to be no auto widescreen switching. I currently have my dvd player connected via component video, on the weekend I will try an RGB scart connection to see if it makes any difference. Oh and I don’t like the new menu the first season was far more superior.
 
They got the intro wrong on that? Now that's infuriating. I mean, originally they had it right; why change it?
 
Did it come in a better case this time? On the season 1's the disks could come out of the case very easily and be scratched.
 
I mean, originally they had it right; why change it?
Click to expand...

As far as I can tell we're talking about JMS's introduction to the S2 set on disc one. That's what contains a spoiler for "Divided Loyalties" (presumably a reference to Andrea's departure.) Since this was newly recorded for the S2 set, I'm not sure what you mean by the comment quoted above.

Regards,

Joe
 
i believe they mean the opening title sequence for the first episode

and i'm just guessing, that you mean it shows delenn with hair instead of as her old self - as people don't actually know what she looks like out of the chrysalis till after the episode
 
You got it right in one LightNZ.

Yep its a better case this time,'all the discs stayed in place, although I did not check for scratches, I will have to do so this evening.
 
Yep its a better case this time,'all the discs stayed in place, although I did not check for scratches, I will have to do so this evening.
Click to expand...

Way hey, my discs arrived today! :)
One of my discs was not held in place.
None of my discs are scratched though.

Well, my employer closes down at the end of April, so I'm out of work. What better way to spend my free time than to watch S2 of B5. :)

A question. Does the R1 release of S1 have a shiny cover like the R1 S2 release? We don't seem to get those on releases here in the UK.
Mmmmm, shiny.
 
I have only had time to view one episode this evening due to
a) a server going down at work
b) Buffy and Angle air on Thursday nights back to back in the UK.

Lets get the bad news out of the way first:

snip

Oh and the transfer....








For those of you who were hoping for a better quality transfer from Season 1 are going to be disappointed. There were lots of scratches on the episode, even a vertical and horizontal line showing up on two occasions. The dreaded grain factor is still there, however it seems to fluctuate between scenes. I cannot decide if it is on a par with the later episodes of season 1 or not.
Click to expand...


Damn! :mad: Damn! Damn! Damn! :mad: :(
 
Oh, the intro to the season...

Whew! I thought it was the title sequence. I can avoid showing the intro to my friends, but the title sequence would have been much harder to avoid.

And I've heard that my $63-dollar set (ha ha!) is on its way (more ha ha!). It will probably be waiting for me when I arrive home from college.
 
This is getting confusing guys, I probably did not explain myself properly:

1) The wrong title sequence has been used on the first two episodes

2)For thoes of you who have not seen Divided Loyalties I WOULD RECOMEND that you do not watch the special feature which I refered to as an intro in my above post which is what has caused the confuion, on disc one (like on disc 1 on of season 1) as it has some comments which could ruin a story line in that episode.
 
im not exactly sure of what you mean with "shiny", but i dont think my set is.
Click to expand...

It means kinda metallic looking.

Another thing I've noticed that's different between my R2 S1 and my R1 S2 is that the "front" of the box set is on the opposite side in relation to the other box set.
Again, is that some weird R1/R2 thing?!
Or am I making no sense?!
:)
 
i believe they mean the opening title sequence for the first episode

and i'm just guessing, that you mean it shows delenn with hair instead of as her old self - as people don't actually know what she looks like out of the chrysalis till after the episode
Click to expand...

If I'm remembering correctly, this isn't an issue just with the DVDs, but also popped up when the show was first rerun.

When Bruce Boxleitner first recorded the voiceover for the opening sequence, they hadn't yet assembled the video portion, so he had to do it "blind". And it didn't sound quite right -- the timing was clearly a bit off, and lots of fans noticed this and complained. Of course, JMS had caught it as well, and was able to calm everybody down by mentioning that Bruce had already redubbed the narration, but that the "better" version wasn't yet available when they had to package the first few episodes of the season.

Eventually, somebody decided to replace the opening titles on those episodes, but didn't notice or didn't care about the "Delenn's Hair" issue. So we have the improved narration, and Delenn has hair.
 
Your right its quite trival, I didn't expect the thread to develop in this direction.

Also, any of you guys who have the S2 set how do you think it looks comapred to S1. I watched a couple of secens from an S1 episode and found the video quality to be better on S1.

I hope I am imagining this.
 
The box is easier to hide than part of the episode itself. I'm something of a purist when it comes to my converts because those who converted me spoiled me rotten.
 
Oh dear. I think I just found something very disturbing. I noticed a few heads half of the screen on the first episode (Points of Departure). I thought this is how it must be and ignored it.

Today I watched the episode Spider in the Web and at the 40 min (or there about) another cropped head. It is the scene in which Garibaldi asks Sheridan how he knew about Project Lazarus. Half his head is missing, it looks very amateurish.

Now I don’t remember issues like this on the broadcast versions, so I dug out my vhs copy that I taped all those years ago and saw the scene in question, and Garibaldi is all on screen.

Have WB screwed up again, or is this something to do with the strange way in which B5 was filmed?
 
Funny, I didnt see such things in Points of Departure.

Sometimes I swear that it may have to do with people's individual DVD players, Televisions (having their DVDs set up for the right TV type), and how they have their stuff set up.
 
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