Some ruminations from a fellow fan. B5 on DVD is really quite heartbreaking. The cropped CGI, mastering errors and flecktastic prints are well known issues, but the biggest problem for me is that when it came time to create the widescreen versions, they simply cheated.
The original episodes were finished for broadcast in 4:3 ratio. To create proper widescreen versions they would have to go back in and re-edit the shows to rebuild them from scratch. But if you watch the DVDs long enough you'll realise that they simply took the 4:3 versions, blew them up and cropped them, and then dropped in widescreen footage where ever possible.
Here's an example. Grab the Season 2 box set and fire up the episode The Coming of Shadows. Skip forward to the start of the third act (I think). It's the scene with G'Kar in his quarters with Dr. Franklin. The act opens with a CGI flyby of the station, and then cross fades to the live action, which should be in widescreen but isn't because the cross-fade means there's no way for the editor to splice the widescreen footage in. It's not until the next hard cut two minutes later when actual widescreen footage appears. The blown up and cropped 4:3 footage looks atrocious, and this problem happens in virtually every episode.
There's another spot where the effect is quite obvious. Find the scene in the same episode where the Emperor comes on board, and the scene cuts from him to the B5 crew standing in line. Freeze frame through the cut and you can see where the widescreen footage is spliced in a few frames too late.
The S2 box set is easily the worst. S3-5 improve a little bit, but on the whole the entire thing is a disaster. Most TV shows are stuck in standard definition where BR discs will never exist, but B5 is forever trapped in sub-DVD quality. And all of this so we can now see a pot plant in the corner of Sheridan's office.
