The Matrix Trilogy HD DVD Reviews... (1 Viewer)

[Rob Young]

I feel upconverted DVDs can look really good (assuming they have quality transfers) and some can come close to poor HD but a half decent HD transfer is easily superior to upconverted DVD and then a top HD transfer kills any DVD.

As for the POTC 1 dvd, I agree with David that it was poor with all the EE and other issues. I am still waiting for my bluray version of the movie to ship but no doubt it destroys the DVD. Hell it'd destroy it even if it had no added detail but was without EE.

 

[Martin Teller]

Woohoo, Circuit City is honoring my $19.99 order! Thanks again for the tip, glad I jumped on it in time.

 

[troy evans]

Earlier Today I had a talk with a friend of mine who is a bluray fanatic.I told Him about the post I made,He got a hugh chuckle out of it.He finds My excitement over these new formats great,but,says I should be careful making profound and inaccurate statements as I did.He also pointed out that had I made this post where He frequents AVSforums They would have ripped Me a new ass! Cees,David,Edwin,Thomas and Rob,I Thank You All for the feedback and being respectful whereas I should have had a little more restraint making such a bold statement.Tonight My friend is going to bring his Bluray player over to show Me just how inaccurate My claim was.He also wants to check out the Matrix films in HD.Here's to hoping in the future great upconversion doesn't effect My mental state again.The Smallville thing did bum Me out a little.Hope season 6 makes up for it.

 

[ppltd]

Not a problem at all, Troy. I hope your friend brings over one of the Pirates films in blu-ray to show just how sweet both formats can be. With Matrix on hd dvd, and Pirates on BD, you will be watching just about the best of both formats, and should enjoy them both.

 

[Cees Alons]

And there's absolutely nothing wrong with a certain amount of preference for one of the two formats. A preference which may even shift in time ... and shift again, if the circumstances should change.

We're consumers. We buy what we like/need/can afford/want to spend.


Cees

 

[Chris S]

Should have my copy this afternoon! This will make the 5th, 6th, and 7th new release titles I've watched this week. :insert exhausted smiley:

 

[ppltd]

I agree with you, Cees. While I own both formats, my preference stills lies with HD DVD and I do not see that changing anytime soon. But we can still enjoy what comes out from both camps.

 

[Cees Alons]

Exactly!


Cees

 

[Dave Moritz]

While I will be buying mostly Blu-ray I will also be enjoying both formats as well.

I will also be adding the Matrix HD-DVD to my collection!

 

[Chris S]

While I haven't had time to watch the entire trilogy yet, I must say that, after cruising through a few key scenes for each film, I'm very impressed! I'll definitely be adding yet another title to the demo heap this week.

 

[loganhunter2002]

Is any one have problems loading any of the HD DVD set of the Matrix on their XA2 player? I'm getting the error code of 4086 4203 when I try to play the Matrix Reloaded HD DVD.

 

[Robert George]

...is indeed a textbook example of FUD. "FUD", Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt, is used primarily by marketing hacks to cast doubt on a competitor's product when no factual evidence can be presented, usually because it doesn't exist. These incessant comparisons between The Matrix and POTC are silly and useless. Forgetting that these are different codecs, on different formats, transferred and encoded at different places by different people on different machines, they are fundamentally different films shot in fundamentally different ways. Attempting to compare one to the other as a means to prove one codec or format superior is utterly and completely senseless.

Insinuating that The Matrix could have looked better with a higher bit rate without pointing out specific compression related artifacts is irresponsible and brings nothing to the discussion. Bit starvation is not a terribly difficult thing to see with even moderate experience and knowing what to look for. No one, not a single reviewer that I have seen quoted (most of whom are really just amateur enthusiasts like most of us here) has claimed to see compression artifacts in any of the HD DVD encodes of the Matrix movies. Not one. Even suggesting the possibility that these could look better when there is nothing to see that is a problem is nothing more than a wild assumption based on personal bias.

I have an idea, how about we look at each release and judge based on the merits of that disc and move on.

 

[Shawn Perron]

This is just a silly arguement. Of course there would be an improvement with a higher bitrate, but this is not the question that needs discussing. The question to ask is "How much better?". HD-DVD people tend to say there would be negligable improvement while the Blu-Ray crowd says there could be substantial gains. I personally feel there could be quality gains at this time, but as the codecs mature throwing more bits at the image will lead to diminishing returns. You have to remember that both AVC and VC-1 are still works in progress. I'm sure that in a year VC-1 could deliver a higher quality presentation at the same bitrate, just as movies from last year most likely could see improvement if they were reencoded today. All you have to do is look at the early years of DVD and realize that we probably have lots of room to grow on the quality side, unless someone is going to make the presumptuous claim that Pirates/Matrix have already shown us the best quality we will see this generation of media.

 

[Steve Schaffer]

I have both an HDA2 and a PS3, running to a Sony KDS60A2000.

As expected both the Matrix HD DVD set and POTC BD discs are outstanding examples of the respective formats. I have SD versions of these and am quite familiar with them. The improvement over SD is more pronounced in the case of the POTC movies primarily because the SD versions of these were not nearly as good as the SD versions of the Matrix films.

I would not be foolish enough to say the Matrix HD was better than POTC HD or vice versa for all the obvious reasons already stated. To my eyes the Matrix sequels are ever so slightly better looking than the original Matrix, but this was also the case with the SD versions and I think is perhaps more to do with the cinematography than the transfer.

 

[Robert George]

Presumptuous, is it? What is more presumptuous, listening to the people that actually encode these discs that tell us that both the HD DVD and Blu-ray formats are capable of delivering video content using the latest codecs that is visually indistinguishable from the source master on even the best consumer equipment, or assuming the professionals working with digital video haven't learned anything in the ten years since DVD was released?

 

[troy evans]

Man, am I sorry I Made that statement about Bluray POTC.

 

[Edwin-S]

Why? The arguments about the merits of increased bit-rate have been going on for some time now. Regarding upconversion, there are plenty of people who have or have had the same opinion as you regarding upconverted DVD image quality. You just happened to post into a thread frequented by people who have been watching quite a bit of HD material. Most of them have been able to compare upconverted DVDs to their HD counterparts which has allowed them to come to the conclusion that HD discs have more detail. There is certainly no reason to apologize for posting an opinion. It would have been someone else if it hadn't been you. You just have to expect that others with different experiences are going to respond.

 

[Douglas Monce]

Also the difference between and upconverted DVD and HD gets more dramatic the larger the screen gets.

Doug

 

[Tim Glover]

Somebody had the guts to say it. Thanks Robert. This has been going on for awhile now and sometimes it's obvious and other times it's slick and masked behind trying to appear neutral. Either way, this FUD is quite nauseating and almost every good thread gets turned into bit rates and our hearing algorithims-sp? I wonder when the last time some of these people actually watched a film for the sake of enjoying it instead of watching the bit meter go up and down?

Did a quick spin of the original Matrix yesterday. Looks fabulous. Well done Warner. The audio is a dream too.

 

[Shawn Perron]

There is a difference between FUD and merely overstating the facts. The fact is that more bits would look closer to the master during difficult scenes where neither format has the peak bitrates to achieve it anyway. The only arguement is the degree of improvement. If adding bits allows you to see 2 individual human hairs in a small area of a scene where originally you could only see one, is that an improvement worth debating? How about a couple extra tiny pieces of shrapnel during a high motion explosion? And yet tiny differences like this are the reason that many people spend big bucks on home theater equipement.

The only FUD is claiming "transparency to the master". Does anyone seriously believe that either Blu-Ray or HD-DVD is going to consistently be able to achieve the same level of quality of a several hundred mb/s master over the entire running length of a feature film? The limited peak bitrates for both formats are going to prevent achieving "transparency to the master" during complex scenes.