Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/05/24/get-the-awesome-babylon-5-ency.html
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Probably has an entry like this one:
Spoo are regarded with contempt by most species in Babylon 5; they "are the only creatures of which the Interstellar Animal Rights Protection League says, simply, 'Kill ‘em.’
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Does the encyclopedia have an ebook edition?
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Even better, it comes with an online edition. You can purchase it separately (and it will continue to be sold even once the print edition is finished).
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS OF THE ONLINE MULTIMEDIA EDITION?
• Pay once, access forever
• Pinch and Zoom images
• Over 1,000 entries feature video related to the headword. These videos are in addition to the high definition CGI sequences fans have never seen before.
• Production notebooks for selected episodes. Production notebooks catalog the behind-the-scene reports and documentation including shooting scripts.
• Over time we will also be including convention video from when the show was in production as well as tons of behind the scenes photos.
• Searchable
• Continually updated
• Portable, always have it with you via tablet, phone or connected computer
• All entries are that contain other headwords are hyperlinked that entry.
• No shipping charges, tax or VAT.
• Takes up less space/weighs nothing
• View entries alphabetically, by episode or by category (aliens, ships, etc) or by source (example: all entries from Babylon 5 novel “To Dream in the City of Sorrows”.
• Exclusive B5 trivia, word search puzzles, crosswords
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Well you still got the lurker’s guide to babylon 5!
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Many, many, many moons ago, I did my own B5 encyclopedia.
Those who have nothing better to do (and who have a high tolerance for terrible jokes with high UK pop culture content) may look here:
https://www.scurra.com/babylon5/
I apologise in advance.
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Heh, good one!
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Spoo is a type of food popular in the Centauri empire, not an animal.
Some liken it to tasting like chicken, but not according to anyone that’s actually tried it.
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It’s both actually:
Spoo is a meat based food product produced by the Centauri Republic and is a staple of the average Centauri diet.
The Spoo itself is a small, pasty white mealy creature that is ideally raised in a damp, m o i s t, somewhat chilly environment and is generally considered to be among the ugliest animals in the known galaxy, except by the pak’ma’ra, who think spoo simply look like they don’t get enough exercise.
EDIT: I really hate that people have such an issue with that “m” word (meaning not dry/not wet) that it has to be auto blocked here. So fucking ridiculous.
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Just looked at the prices. Nope, not affordable, sad to say.
Could we maybe get one of those picture quality AIs I keep reading about to enhance the original CGI shots for a HD release?
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Unfortunately, I don’t think we will ever be seeing a HD release of Bab5.
- The aformentioned CGI was only ever rendered for lower resolutions. It could be re-done, but at a cost
- Many of the masters have been damaged and not stored properly. Look to the season 1 DVD release for examples of how bad it is out there.
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And that is why we need a neural net to understand what is pictured in the renders and recreate it at a higher resolution. A human could in theory do it frame by frame, so I guess in not that far fetched that a AI could do it.
I’m not saying it is happening right now, but the examples shown on various BB posts are encouraging. No hurry, I’ve got a few decades probably until full blown dementia.
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No, the money isn’t there. Star Trek got a redo on the special effects because it’s star trek. The audience for B5 is a fraction of the size. WHich means lower sales and thus not enough profit for redoing the effects.
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According to JMS, Internal politics at the studio are keeping Warner Brothers from doing anything with B5. They won’t release it to another studio, and they aren’t going to do anything with it themselves. Wait for the current set of
petulant babiesmen in suits to retire, and maybe something will happen. But not before.
- Having seen the redone effects for Star Trek TOS, I think it’s actually better that we satisfy ourselves with the current low res version. Yeah, you might hope we’ll get this:
But what if instead we get this:
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Wow! While I like the show and know people that worked on B5 … What does this get me that I can’t just learn from hitting some B5 wiki or something?
Or should I just put it like this:
A pair of really heavy books, suitable for braining any Drakh who come to take you away.
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Print books like this are collectible.At least for obsessed fans.
My friends and I started re-watching B5 together, one episode a week. We’re up to episode 15 of season 1. This is going to take a while. But for one of us this is the first time he’s seen it.
In the case of Foundation Imaging’s CG, you are looking at the original images, in SD.
Even if said AI improves upon this to some lower level of acceptability for production standard, I suspect @Glaurung (the most magical of Tolkien’s dragons), is still right: the audience isn’t there to justifiy even that level of effort.
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Me! I love print. I’ve got a lot of books, and this was on the air during my twenties and I’ve fond memories of trying hard to scrape up a TV and a VCR to watch the latest, taped episode via friends.
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In the case of Foundation Imaging’s CG, you are looking at the original images, in SD.
It was a bit of a mess that when Netter Digital ripped away the show from Foundation Ron send them all the asset files with the filenames truncated to 8.3.
It was probably hell from them to get anything loaded. I bet nobody would have a working versions of the original scene files to re-render.
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