MovieChat Forums > Babylon 5 (1993) Discussion > No Blu-ray?

No Blu-ray?

posted 7 years ago by NotASpeckOfCereal
9 replies | jump to latest

[There are no Blu-ray threads I can find in this IMDb forum. Any old ones have been purged, so let this be the current one.]

I haven't watched my DVDs in years and I was just thinking of doing that.

Then I thought "but I should probably get it in Blu-ray -- surely it's been remastered by now. Of course, as most of you know, this has never been done. Here's a thread the capsulizes the reasons nicely:

https://www.quora.com/Will-Babylon-5-be-properly-remastered-for-a-Blu-ray-release

Take note of the 3rd reply from Eric M. Van written just over 2 years ago:

Given that the cost of CGI goes down continually, I actually think it's inevitable, if that proves to be the only stumbling block. But that may be at least a decade off.

Of course, someone has to do that work.

Any more recent news? Has JMS spoken up on this?

PS: it probably wouldn't hurt for everyone to add their name to the pre-order / waiting lists. Nothing will tell them that it will be worth the cost than a hefty list of waiting customers:

http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Babylon-5-Blu-ray/67835/
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B001CUFI7M

Brevity is the soul of wit.

[–] panzermeyer44 7 years ago

I'm 95% certain that we'll never see a bluray set for Babylon 5. Warner Brothers won't pay for it.

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal 7 years ago

Warner Brothers won't pay for it.

If someone can show that there's a projected profit, why wouldn't they?

Brevity is the soul of wit.

[–] panzermeyer44 7 years ago

Because in my opinion, I think they view B5 as something that made them a lot of money in the past but also a franchise that is well past its popularity.

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal 7 years ago

Thankfully, that's not how business works.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

[–] panzermeyer44 7 years ago

How does business not work on profit motive? If Warner Brothers doesn't think they'll make a lot of money with a bluray release of B5 then why would they bother making it?

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal 7 years ago

How does business not work on profit motive? If Warner Brothers doesn't think they'll make a lot of money with a bluray release of B5 then why would they bother making it?

They absolutely work on a profit motive. But that's not what you said, to wit:

Because in my opinion, I think they view B5 as something that made them a lot of money in the past but also a franchise that is well past its popularity.

First off, in a business meeting "in my opinion" doesn't fly. You need to research the opinions you tell your boss.

Also, the franchise is not just well past its popularity, it's been dead for 20 years. The topic at hand is re-selling the same product.

People are buying black-and-white television shows that died over 50 years ago.

Also, you know what happens when formats change (from vinyl to CDs, or a CD that's been remastered a 2nd and 3rd time from the source tapes, or VHS to DVDs, to Blu-rays, now to 4K Blu-rays)? The owners of the copyright materials make that money all over again.

They ABSOLUTELY would re-packaged this product as a blu-ray even though it's a dead franchise because FREE MONEY ... if only the CGI still existed.

Now the only question is (back to the business meeting at WB) where you tell your boss that you looked into the costs of getting the source materials, spending a year re-scanning it to HD (ala Star Trek: Next Generation, another really old TV show), and also have a team spend a year recreating the lost CGI which will cost more, hence total costs.

All that's left once you have the total costs is to project sales to see if there's a net profit. Give your boss the spread (from loss, to minor profits, to major profits within a certain time frame, etc. etc. yada, yada).

So if I were running the meeting and you started with "in my opinion", I would ask the next person in line to go out and actually do the work.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

[–] purple_dave 7 years ago

WB has their company set up in different deparments. Each department is expected to bring in more money than they did the year before. Each production that involves two departments involves a lot of work and resources expended by each department, but only gets credited to the lead department. It basically discourages inter-departmental cooperation because you waste your own resources to inflate another deparment's success.

How this matters is B5 falls under the home video deparment, last we knew. It works out for them to keep it in production, so long as it brings in money. The syndication department, on the other hand, wants nothing to do with it because they get no credit for the success. Without syndication keeping it on the air, it won't bring in the new fans needed to generate the amount of sales they need to make for a Blu-Ray project to pay for itself. If you have dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of people signed up waiting for delivery, do you know what they'll see? That nobody is interested. If they had a million people signed up, that's probably enough to get them to crunch the numbers if nothing else, but probably not to guarantee a green light on the project. They have to assume that everyone who would buy one is on that list, and that not everyone who is on that list will actually materialize into a sale.

You know what noone tells you about cooking with the Dark Side? The food is really good!

[–] NotASpeckOfCereal 7 years ago

They have to assume that everyone who would buy one is on that list, and that not everyone who is on that list will actually materialize into a sale.

They should also assume there will be sales to people that were never on a list.

In a way, there is more incentive for a fan to upgrade from DVD to Blu-ray than they had with ST:TNG and Battlestar Galactica, because B5 Blu-rays with new CGI would look far, far better than just a re-scanning of the same source material used for the DVDs.

But yeah, the WB business isn't run like Paramount and B5 isn't nearly as large as the Star Trek world.

Brevity is the soul of wit.

[–] purple_dave 7 years ago

You can assume that people who are on that list will lose interest, die, or any other reason that could eliminate them as a possible sale. But you can't just assume that there are just millions of potential buyers out there waiting to materialize. If DVD sales have tanked (and the fact that I don't even see them in stores means the chances of impulse buys are almost nonexistent now), there's no syndication to grab new viewers, the series just keeps getting older without any new material being released, and they don't have people breaking down doors to get it on Blu-Ray...at some point they're just going to write it off and focus their efforts elsewhere. It's not a matter of "will this be successful", but one of "which of these many projects will be the most successful". Putting it out on DVD was a no-brainer. They never actually managed to complete the series on VHS, DVD had hit the point where it was the go-to format for home video, the only new material they had to produce were some very basic DVD menus and the handful of audio commentaries they recorded (just a couple for each box set), plus they had the release of the original The Gathering/In The Beginning dual-sided DVD to use as a gauge for how popular the series might be. Going to Blu-Ray would mean having to start up a large production (which 100% would require getting JMS involved because that was a stipulation in his contract), and the strength of the DVD sales early on is just hurting the prospects because it made the drop to current levels that much greater. _IF_ they had paired the DVD releases with a big syndication run and at least a small amount of promotion, they might have been able to launch a resurgence in popularity. They didn't, and trying to pull it off now would be kinda like trying to win a fist fight by only using your right in the first round, and only your left in the second. It's still doable, just far less likely.

You know what noone tells you about cooking with the Dark Side? The food is really good!