this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
98 points (100.0% liked)
Babylon5
610 readers
3 users here now
It was the dawn of the third age of mankind. Ten years after the Earth Minbari war. The Babylon project was dream giving form. It's goal to prevent another war by creating a place where humans and aliens could work out their differences peacefully. It's a port of call. Home away from home for diplomats, hustlers, entrepreneurs, and wanders. Humans and aliens wrap in two million five hundred thousand tons of spinning metal, all alone in the night. It can be a dangerous place, but it's our last best hope for peace. This is the story of last of the Babylon stations. The year is 2258. The name of the place is Babylon 5.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
It was actually filmed in 16:9, but aired in 4:3. Strazinsky correctly predicted that 16:9 would be the future format. A 16:9 crop OF the 4:3 crop is criminal.
The CGI was done in 4:3 for budget reasons, so CGI and composite shots are only available in 4:3 (which then had to be cropped for 16:9 later on), which is why the CGI looks terrible. At least in the earlier seasons, afaik later on rights were acquired by some network that wanted 16:9 and so from that point forward CGI was also in 16:9
https://www.modeemi.fi/~leopold/Babylon5/DVD/DVDTransfer.html has lots of info and examples
The CGI was supposed to be re-rendered for widescreen release but things went south with all that. A bunch of files were found though and someone has done them in 1080 widescreen and they look amazing. They’re on YouTube. Sadly I think they all got turned over to WB and have never been heard from since I don’t think.
When they were making the original 4:3 CGI, they thought that by the time a 16:9 release was desired, technology would have evolved enough that they’d want to re-render everything anyway.
Indeed. And they certainly did want to. But as always, money.
That's an excellent link, thank you!
I have heard that about Stargate, which is why modern remasters of Stargate SG-1 are in an uncropped 16:9, with more content onscreen than the original 4:3 run.
I love Stargate, but I don't think I knew that. Cool!
Did they release the original 16:9 too?
That I don't know. I believe the original DVD releases were still 4:3.
I seem to recall that the CGI effects were only rendered at 4:3, and with the original files lost there was no simple way to re-record them.
Ah that's too bad. Thanks for the info.