More Info on Streaming Wing Commander Academy! (May 10, 2020)

ChrisReid

Super Soaker Collector / Administrator
We've got an update on the exciting news that Peacock will be carrying Wing Commander Academy as a launch title. None other than DefianceIndustries happened to work on the service, but never thought to check for anything related to Wing Commander. He's been able to confirm the show will be included and answer some of our preliminary questions:

A simple X1/Flex voice remote search for "Wing Commander Academy" will bring the show up. All thirteen episodes are included with a generic series description for each. It's hard at this point to get a side-by-side quality comparison with the DVD, but it's definitely a big step up from some of the unauthorized downloadable/streaming copies available over the years. Resolution appears to still be SD and basic closed captions are also available. We can't wait to get our hands on this for ourselves - it's always wonderful to find a new way to experience Wing Commander!





Defiance Industries: It's also voice search enabled so if you have x1 voice remote just say 'Wing Commander Academy' and it comes right up. They didn't screw with the aspect ratio so it letterboxes on a wide screen tv. But it streams nicely.

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Original update published on May 10, 2020
 
This is very cool! I have X1 and I just did a quick comparison of a few minutes of "Red and Blue". The first thing I noticed was that the audio mixing in the beginning of the episode is much better. In the DVD, the music and FX drown out the dialogue, but the voices are very clear on X1. I would say that video quality is comparable. I'm not sure if I have the best eye for this sort of thing. The X1 colors may be a little bit more muted versus DVD. I thought I noticed more digital artifacts on X1 at first, but noticed it less when I started over. Maybe it was just a glitch. Having closed captioning is nice. No individual episode descriptions. They all say:

"In the year 2655 [sic], a group of new graduates of the Space Naval Academy replaces the crew of a refurbished ship to complete training, but members find themselves taking part in a very real battle against the Kilrathi."
(Edit: Didn't notice that this was in the picture above)


Episode Order:
1. Red and Blue
2. The Last One Left
3. The Most Delicate Instrument
4. Word of Honor
5. Lords of the Sky
6. Chain of Command
7. Expendable
8. Recreation
9. Walking Wounded
10. On Both Your Houses
11. Invisible Enemy
12. Price of Victory
13. Glory of Sivar

Airdate order, right?
 
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That is the airdate order. I'm very excited about having a new source for the audio for the first few episodes... Red and Blue and The Most Delicate Instrument both have issues on the DVD.

I'm also very interested about the source of the captions. When the show originally aired, the first several episodes had TERRIBLE closed captioning that was clearly done by ear ('Kilrapi', 'Commodore Tallwood')... but then later on the captions were taken straight from scripts and actually revealed character names that aren't ever spoken.

2655 for the description is straight from the marketing material so I can't blame them too much for that!

I'm also curious to see what the 'restored footage' in Walking Wounded looks like (which will tell us if this is the same transfer as the DVDs or something else).

The promo image they use of the cast is super interesting too because it was released very early and replaced with an alternate version of everyone in their dress blues... it showed up in the past at Origin's website in 1996 but nowhere else. So they must have access to something interesting to source stuff that's different from the DVD group!
 
Just watched all of "Red and Blue" with closed captioning on. There were a few mistakes, but nothing terrible. They even used the correct spelling for "Geoffrey" Tolwyn.

So what is the "restored footage" and where would it be in the episode?

I also noticed that the "Savage Dragon" series is also available, so that Warrior King episode can also be viewed.
 
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