Gotta love Warner Bros packaging skills ...

[GaribaldisHair]

Hey guys,

I am now the proud owner of all three seasons released so far on DVD (R2) and have just noticed something that made me tut, shake my head and break out in a wry smile.

On the S1 packaging, both outer and inner boxes have the words ... The Complete First Season ... at the top.

On the S2 packaging, both outer and inner boxes have the words ... The Complete Second Series ... at the top.

On the S3 packaging, the outer box has the words ... The Complete Third Season ... at the top, whilst the inner box has the words ... The Complete Third Series ... at the top.

Gotta love them WB quality controllers, haven't you.



Cheers,

 

[PillowRock]

Well, they still have one more combination to use for S4, but then what will they do on the S5 box?



:devil:

 

[Bester]

Maybe they'll name S4 "The complete 5th series" and S5 "The complete 4th series", just for a giggle.

 

[KoshN]

Those mistakes are nothing compared to the "quality" of their hub design.

 

[Bester]

Those mistakes are nothing compared to the "quality" of their hub design.

True. They over-compensated with the hubs for the S3 box set and the DVDs are near-impossible to remove.

 

[KoshN]

Speaking for my Region 1 sets, the Season 1, Season 2 and Season 3 hubs are IDENTICAL. They are passive (stationary pins) and hold at about 40% of the friction that the Buffy Season 1 & 3 hubs do. There's just a certain technique that you have to use to get the B5 discs off their hubs. Here's how I do it:

<ul type="square">
[*]Put the set down on a hard surface, and open it to the page you want.

[*]With your left hand, put your thumb at the bottom edge of the disc and anchor that edge.

[*]At the same time, gently pull up on the opposite edge with the index finger of your left hand.

[*]Then, press the hub through the disc with the index finger of your right hand.

[*]Lift the disc off, by the edges, with your left hand.

[/list]

Presto!

 

[Zathras]

Gotta love them WB quality controllers, haven't you.

Yeah, I was especially frustrated when the VHS tapes came out several years ago. On the front of all the boxes they had the pictures of the characters and in the background they had the station UPSIDE DOWN. I can't stand stupid people.

 

[KoshN]

A Call to Arms (small photo of poster) Aren't all these ships upside down? The Victory class ship certainly is, but the Whitestars look upside down as well. Anybody got the actual poster? It's hard to tell from this tiny print.

The upside down (from the way we're used to seeing the ships) thing seems to happen a lot. Just look at the Sharlins on the B5 Region 1, Season 2 Booklet.

 

[sleepy_shadow]

But in space, upside down does not matter.

Except perhaps visually.

 

[KoshN]

But in space, upside down does not matter.

Except perhaps visually.

And that's why I included:

"(from the way we're used to seeing the ships)"

 

[Zathras]

I doubt that the graphic designer who created the covers for the VHS tapes (as well as the other pictures mentioned) was really debating points of view and space logistics. Likely, some moron (who didn't take even a second to verify his work) screwed up and made himself and Warner Brothers look like idiots.

Isn't the "spine" of the station referred to somewhere as the "dorsal ridge" or something like that? I seem to remember someone referring to it as the "dorsal so-and-so." If that's the case, then what we consider to be the "top" of the station truly is the top (apart from the fact that B5 is almost ALWAYS shown from the same angle over the course of the series which sets up definite directional landmarks for the viewer).

 

[phoenixrising]

Just discovered these bloopers in the R1 Season 1 set:

-The Picture of Delenn on the back of the outer box is from The Gathering rather than the first season make-up.

-On the booklet the images with the first disc have a Soul Hunter. No problem, except the picture is of Martin Sheen from The River of Souls .

Seems someone in the QA department was asleep when these went through.

 

[Quagmire]

I know Thumper said that if you can't say anything nice don't say anything at all but...whoopedeedooooooo.

 

[Zathras]

Well, sometimes it's fun to nitpick. It's like an inside joke...nobody else gets it (or even really cares), but it's funny to people who like B5.

You'd expect a few mistakes from some small-time media distributer, but surely the multi-billion dollar mogul AOL/Time-Warner has a well-paid Quality Control department which could have easily checked the artwork - they just didn't.

Imagine you went to the video store to pick up the latest relese of Gone With The Wind. In the foreground is the classic picture of Rhett Butler holding Miss Scarlett in his arms and looking longingly into her eyes...while in the background you notice that the image is not of Terra plantation, but Southfork Ranch from the TV show Dallas. Both are famous houses, but you can bet that a mistake like that would have been caught before the scene was printed on a million boxes. B5 fans are just as fanatical about "our" show as Gone With The Wind buffs are about theirs; there just aren't as many of us and so we don't spend as much as they do. The idea that Babylon 5 is just "obscure sci-fi" is probably the reason that it wasn't checked more closely. Now that the DVD's are selling like hotcakes, I'm sure there's more attention paid to Babylon 5 and how it is presented.