Babylon 5 Remastered is now streaming on HBO Max

Last Updated on July 30, 2021

Babylon 5 is one of the more beloved sci-fi series out there, but it hasn't received much respect when it comes to home-media and streaming releases as fans have had to deal with cropped, blurry images for years. Thankfully, J. Michael Straczynski's sci-fi epic is finally in much better shape and is also available to stream on HBO Max.

For those of you who don't know, Babylon 5 was conceived as a "novel for television" long before prime-time serialized story-telling was cool and series creator J. Michael Straczynski wrote damn near every episode of the series. Babylon 5 takes place on the titular space station which was built in the aftermath of a major intergalactic war and the series explores themes of loss, oppression, corruption, and redemption, with plenty of sci-fi mysteries, alien races, and political intrigue thrown in for good measure.

According to Engadget, all five seasons of Babylon 5 have been scanned and remastered from the original camera negative in 4K, with a colour correction and the cleaning of dirt and scratches as well. The series is now in the 4:3 aspect ratio rather than the 16:9 found on the DVD releases, but although the series does look much better, it's probably best not to go in expecting a restoration similar to what Star Trek: The Next Generation received. When it comes to the series' many CGI and composite sequences, those have unfortunately only received minor tweaks and have been digitally upscaled to HD; that said, they still look a lot better than their DVD counterparts. These remastered episodes have been available on iTunes since last year, but this move to HBO Max will likely allow many more to check out the series for themselves.