Not to derail the thread but i wasn’t aware there was a good source for Babylon 5. The DVD is fake widescreen and you cannot find the original 4:3 ratio version on DVD.
And with frame blending due to the special effects you cannot restore 24 fps.
As for SG1 i hope you use the uncut pilot film and not the censored directors cut version.
What did you meant by ‘fake widescreen’?
B5 was filmed in anamorphic widescreen to allow future proofing on 16/9 tv. There is, as far as i know, no original 4:3. Watch B5 on TV only and not your computer monitor as the technology is different. The monitor will show B5 in ‘squishing effect.’
Skywalker probably meant that the live-action scenes were filmed in 16:9, but the cgi/vfx were done in 4:3 to save production costs, so when you watch the DVDs the computer generated scenes (space scene, composite shots) were cropped and zoomed in, which caused blurriness and artefacts.
As for my own approach (once I get around to it): I changed my opinion on the VUDU-version. I compared them and in my opinion to much information is lost left/right since the live action has been cropped in the 4:3 version (there is a scene in the episode “Midnight on the Firing Line”, where the B5-guards next to G’Kar almost completely disappear, which does not happen with the DVD-version). Since the cgi/vfx only makes up for about 15-20% of the actual episodes, I’d rather see more from the live action shots; also, my filtering setup would take care of artefacts. As for having a little less space to look at top/bottom of the screen and sometimes ships being zoomed in, I think I could live with that (but that’s a matter of personal taste, I guess).
Yes, CGI were done in 4:3. There is a slight difference between PAL and NTSC. PAL has more ‘information’ at the top of the screen and NTSC at the bottom. When comparing some CGI scenes you can see it. PAL turned out better than NTSC. I made some improvements to the CGI for the first season. Slightly faster, Sharpened/textured graphics using Reshade. Looks good for now. Just hoping someone knows how to improve the explosions etc. Using MadVr helps a lot.