Comment Re:Which aspect ratio? (Score 1) 267
I've watched B5 through a couple of times now, with friends who hadn't seen it before. Funny thing happens - at the beginning people complain that the CGI looks so bad (it was awesome for mid 90s TV, but I get that in this context it's fair to evaluate against present day). But that fades quite quickly and by the time you're half way through, at Severed Dreams, people are pretty blown away. It's a good time to remind them of their complaints.
I assume that there is a combination of two things going on - the viewer gets used to the style, and the CGI quality does improve considerably over time. I can't tell how much of each is involved, though.
Funny thing about the CGI in B5, of course, is that budget constraints were certainly a factor in the decision - because it was the only way they could possibly do anything as ambitious as they wanted with the cash they had. They were doing some of the most elaborate stuff on TV at the time. I don't think stuff like the CGI sequences in Severed Dreams had ever been seen outside of big budget movies before then. So that tradeoff does show in the early episodes, but it seems like they really pushed the technology forward.