Every time I re-watch the series I completely forget this episode exists.  I keep placing the very worst episodes in season 1 and early season 5 in my mind so A Distant Star kinda sticks out like a sore thumb.
IIRC, it's now when the series really picks up.

Apple has a lossless format and I use that because I have an iPhone and an iPod.  It sucks that Apple's profitable stubbornness in pushing their own proprietary crap works like that, but since the data, convenience and sound are identical to FLAC/WAV/CD, I caved in this case.

Echoing Kosmonaut's point about a good DAC for digital music- not just files but CDs or whatever.
Of course a good CD player will have a good DAC built-in and now with the range of digital network music players expanding, many of them come with really solid DACs as well (like the Squeezebox Touch, which I use).

The mastering on the Police CDs are notoriously bad, so that is a great example of how when most people talk about the sound quality of recordings they are leaving out the single most important element.
You can have the best equipment in the world, it means nothing if the engineers during recording or mastering are…

There are differences in cable quality up to a very finite point, for speaker/audio cables and even some power cables.
But for HDMI, it does not matter, they are simply conveying digital information.  So the idea of paying more than a couple bucks for one is absurd.

Well, no.
MP3s lose data to compress the file, so there is actually a real difference between a 320br MP3 and CD.
Monster cables, however, do the exact same thing as cheaper cables with any amount of insulation.

Well I would respectfully disagree with your assessment on the war's affect on the characters.  I mean if that were true, it would really kill a lot of the intent of the show.  But I would say that the E-M war is exactly what fuels Sinclair's constant push for diplomacy, Sheridenn and Delenn's extreme desire and…

10 years after Japan was nuked twice and it was defeated so resolutely it had to collectively redefined its entire place in the world, it started to become a major economic global power.
Rome was sacked repeatedly in the earliest days of its kingdom and Republic.  It responded by becoming the single greatest empire in…

Well JMS has always claimed that B5 would NEVER go past season 5 no matter what.  Supposedly TNT was willing to do season 6 after they picked up the show (makes sense, why not try to continue a property you invested in) but the actor contracts were all set up in a way that they'd all have to re-negotiated at the same…

SPOILERS

Oh well yeah Sakai was definitely set up to be Shadowed.  I mean.. remember Sinclair's pilot girlfriend in the pilot?  What, he only dates pilot chicks?  No obviously they needed his woman to fly away and come back EVIL.

Zathras is the greatest philosopher in the galaxy, don't be hatin'

I love Boxleitner as an actor, no sarcasm, a lot more than many, it seems.  I like that he's this classical hero type but also like a regular guy.  And sure he's "broad," I guess, like any other fictional character on TV first introduced.  You need distinguishing characteristics until the rest is filled in.

If the Warrior Caste is derivative, the religious caste are not.  They are a pretty unique thing for sci-fi TV.  In my mind, the warrior caste just exist to be the opposite.

Ok well the most commonly held belief amongst B5 fans about "if Sinclair had stayed"- and I don't remember how much was this was confirmed or hinted at by JMS or whatever- was that B4's trip back in time would happen after season 5.

But if there had been worker caste earlier, then Delenn's decision to overload the Grey Council with them later on wouldn't have as much impact.
When she says something like "you had forgot the worker caste, hadn't you?" I was like "uh… yes, yes I had."

Is it even possible to introduce a new major character so suddenly and have it not be clunky?  My guess is they basically just bit the bullet and figured they'd accept that and just make sure they get the new guy in there and doing stuff ASAP.

Sheridan's goofiness is one of my favorite things about him.  And the fact that he's doing a Lincoln speech is perfect because both are Great Men who had major childish, dorkish sides to them.

I think the whole technomage thing is freaking retarded, and I'm as big a B5 fanboy as they come.  The novel trilogy had some clever plotting but… blech.  Space wizards.. whatever.
The actor was awesome and everything he did with Londo was so good so I do like Geometry of Shadows.  But after that, yeah I agree, fuck…

I just assumed he was introduced to fill out the cast of characters a bit and planned to make him more prominent but could never quite figure out what to do with him.
Then they tried again with Zack but that time it worked because they found an interesting hook for him.