The Matrix hits HD DVD May 22. BD release "later" - Page 9

Because it's the only title (or in this case titles) that's actually worth buying on HD DVD since christmas..no wonder then

Other than The Departed and Casino Royale,it's the only disc on either format worth buying since Xmas.

#41

You've obviously never paid attention to common business practices like this. It's why you see similar stores across the street from eachother, why Nintendo will release the new Mario game next to Halo 3, why Microsoft released Gears of War when PS3 came out...etc.

It's all about stealing competitors thunder, now it's not just new releases on May 22, it's battle of the blockbusters within the battle of the formats.

And people would have complained about the BD Matrix being inferior to HD DVD had they released it side by side but neutered. It's a lose-lose situation but will yield a better product in the end this way.

#38

I had to do it.

I have watched the salesranks very closely, and there is a huge difference between #38 and say, #9.

The true test of HD-DVD will be to see if The Matrix collection can break the top 10!!!

Casino Royale has already done this and sold 100,000 units in one week.



My prediction: Matrix collection on HD-DVD will NEVER break Amazon's top ten.

We will see what happens, I have been right about many sales trends so far.

With pleasure!

Darin's question: Audio masters are mostly 24/48 from what I've heard, yet Warner has been limiting the audio to 16/48 for lossless tracks for releases like "The Departed". In your opinion, should Warner do that when there is plenty of space and bandwidth on the Blu-ray disc to use the original bit depth of the audio, instead of cutting it down from the original, like on the HD DVD version?

My Answer: Well first of all, I've been very satisfied by the sound of CDs for many years, and they are 16/44.

In case Darin wasn't the only one who understood the answer - it means I don't think that Warner HAS TO use the 24/48 soundtrack on the releases, since 16/48 is still better than CD quality, and has three times the channels/data as well. I don't think that Warner is "limiting" the audio in any way by including a 16/48 lossless soundtrack, as this is a HUGE step up on what has been the norm for DVDs to date. My very first audition of the TrueHD soundtrack on POTO blew me away, and I still feel that way.

If Warner WERE to release the 24/48 soundtrack on their discs, would I be happy? Absolutely! But I'm still happy that the 16/48 tracks are lossless as they sound fantastically open and clean in comparison to DD+ - and that is NOT a slur on DD+. It's a huge improvement.

As the formats become more mature, I'm sure more studios will start to use 20 and 24 bit tracks in their releases - but 16/48 is a huge improvement which sound absolutely fantastic. Quibbling about the extra bits at this point, IMO, shows a lack of appreciation (or maybe even comprehension) of just how better this already sounds.

As an aside, I think it is rather ludicrous that some BD folks like Darin beat up on Warner like they are crippling the formats by releasing 16/48 lossless tracks - when almost ALL the L-PCM audio soundtracks released by other BD studios are ALSO "only" 16/48. It just seems a rather hypocritical and contrived complaint in the light of that fact and does a disservice to those users of either format who do not take the time to appreciate just how stunning these lossless tracks are.

Hope that makes it clear.

The biggest complaint I have against Warner is that they are forcing us to buy 2 terrible movies in order to get the one we really want. They know the sales of the 2nd and especialy the 3rd films would be very poor had they offered them seperatly.

Still, a box-set in the 30s in little more than 24 hours isn't bad. This thing costs over 80 bucks, ya know.

I'm going to say it now. If this thing were to hit the top 10, and somehow managed to sell 100,000 copies between the two box-sets in their first week, this format war would begin all over again.

That would mean that either 1/3 of all current HD DVD owners bought these movies, or a lot of new HD DVD owners bought these movies. 300,000 movies in a week wouldn't be something any studio could ignore for long.

Still, I don't think it's likely to happen.

Yes - we heard you the first four times. However, some folks still look forward to the smashing special effects in 2 and 3 doing wondrous things with our HD screens, whether they be 32 inches or 120 inches.

While the effects were "brand new" and shockingly novel in Episode 1, they are no less brilliant in 2 and 3. I've said already that some people found the plot in Ep 3 a little hard to follow (ie my girlfriend) and that the ending was a bit ambiguous - but other than that, I would not have missed Episode 3 in theatres for all the world. I think I am not alone there.

As it happens, I saw Revolutions in an IMAX theater, which probably made it more enjoyable. I'm looking forward to re-creating that viewing experience at home for all three films!

How many of us can honestly say that we would only want to watch Part 1 - yet stop there, without watching the other two. I just love the franchise too much to even consider the thought.

I agree, the Matrix is the biggest exclusive that HD-DVD is going to get this year (even if it is only exclusive for a few months before the Blu-ray version comes out too). If Matrix HD-DVD collection breaks the top 10, then even I am willing to admit that the format war is not over.

This could be looked at as a final chance for the format HD-DVD to prove that it is a serious contender and not just going to be a niche market consigned to second place.

All of that said I just don't think the HD-DVD install base can pull this off, again I predict Matrix HD-DVD will never break the top 10.

It will be interesting to watch: HD-DVD's last chance to prove relevant.

i wonder if beatboy thebland and bill hunt are crying right now


i remember blu ray people saying that pirates will outsell matrix on hd-dvd what sales rank is pirates at hahahahh

The thing that makes me wonder is 6 months ago everyone (one both sides) spoke so highly about the matrix. Now that its released there seems to be so many people who all of a sudden dont like it.

PotC already had a big pre-sale spike when it was available like a month ago, Matrix has just been put on Amazon..it's pretty obvious which will be hotter right now. It will outsell Matrix.

Not a fair comparison. Top ten of what? Single releases? You're looking at sets which the full set with extras is around $83 or so on Amazon.com. Now, last I checked (went on preorder yesterday I believe) it was #2 in hd movies behind Casino Royale and #41 in the generic dvd chart and climbing. Ths was in the afternoon. Don't know what it is now.

how could something in the sales ranking of 770+ (pirates)out sell something in the ranking of 40(matrix)? explain to me your theory

I referred to cases where they were already using 50GB discs, so there is no extra cost there. In the case of "The Departed" it would just be putting a 24/48 track on instead of a 16/48 track.

You could look at benes' threads and look at sizes. The sizes give a good clue with TrueHD and a definitive answer with PCM, when math is applied. An XBOX360 add-on connected to an Apple laptop with the right software can be used to look at file sizes. With Blu-ray, people can look at the bitrate meters and then determine things from there.

That isn't even logical. To find out if something is limited it needs to be compared to the higher step, not to the lower step. 1440x1080i would be a big step up from DVD, but that doesn't mean that using that (like on the WMV release of "Terminator 2") isn't limiting compared to using 1920x1080i. Seems like you will go to a lot of lengths to keep from really answering whether Warner should cut a 24/48 master down to 16/48 for Blu-ray because of accomodations for HD DVD. Blu-ray doesn't need to mature for them to use 24/48 for things like "The Departed". If they were using the bits for something else (like to make video encoding easier) it would be one thing, but in this case Warner is using basically the same video encode as HD DVD for Blu-ray, so lots of bandwidth and space just goes unused. If you think they should do the 16/48 on Blu-ray because of HD DVD, just say you think they should, instead of all these machinations about 16/48 being good.

--Darin

Yes. It does appear that the BD supporters are more likely to criticize neutral studios like Warner rather than BD exclusives. I wonder what the avg. PQ and AQ ratings for Warner v. the exclusives are? I thought THe Departed on BD looked and sounded pretty good!

Well just going based on pure math, if Pirates stayed at the top longer than the Matrix, it would certainly sell more, irregardless of where they both are at the moment.

Either way I don't see why it really matters.

Pirates of the Caribbean 1 & 2 have been up for pre-order since around the first week of February.

The Matrix has been up for pre-order for about 2 days.

Amazon calculates sales ranking based on a time-weighted basis against sales volume (or in this case, against pre-order volume). The effect of each individual sale/pre-order fades over time. From what we've observed in the past from effects that "spike" sales on Amazon, it takes about 3-4 days for any title to drift back down once the initial rush goes away, so basically doing a comparison of the two sales rankings just shows there have been many more recent pre-orders for The Matrix Ultimate Collection than for Pirates of the Caribbean.

It in no way is an accurate measure of how many copies have been pre-ordered for any title.

I see hd-dvd start selling more, with 5 free movies, 499.99 players now with price drop to 399.99 April 1st, and seeing it getting advertised on tv and best buy more and circuit city. I wouldnt count hd-dvd out yet.

Did you not read what I wrote? PotC had it's sales spike 2 months ago, which Matrix is having now due to being recently added as a pre-sale. I think it's a matter of you not knowing how Amazon rankings work.

pirates never even broke the top 50....

weird how casino royal has been available for order for months and its still number one. so whats the excuse of pirates being only in tenth?

The start for the Matrix box set is very impressive. But we will have to see how it does over the next few weeks. The preorder period for it will be much shorter than for the Pirates movies (since they ship on the same day), so it should be higher in order to end up with the same number of preorders by the day they ship. If it stays a lot higher, then that will be impressive. Then we'll have to see if we can find out how they actually sold overall, as Amazon is just a portion of the market and is likely to have its own skewings compared to all sales for these discs.

--Darin

Well you haven't been able to answer whether indeed it's bad or not truly lossless.

What do you want me to tell you? I've talked to somebody at Dolby and they say that they know that people can hear the difference between 16/48 and 20/24 or 24/48 (the difference between those 2 is much more contentious). Filmmixer works on this stuff and says he has done testing and there is an audible difference. But there are people who argue both ways. But then there are people who argue that 720p looks the same as 1080p and there would definitely be people who would argue that 1440x1080 looks the same as 1920x1080. By definition 16/48 from a 24/48 master isn't lossless. There is lossy transition and then the compression of 16/48 can be lossless, but it isn't lossless from a 24/48 master. So, what are you looking for? You want some scientific papers about how 16/48 and 24/48 do or don't sound the same?

This stuff reminds me of Aesop's fable with the fox and the grapes, where the fox couldn't get the grapes and so decided that they must be sour. Before HD DVD showed problems doing 24/48 lossless tracks I don't recall anybody on the HD DVD side arguing about 16/48 being as good. Now it seems that the tactics have changed and now higher than 16/48 is being downplayed. If there weren't bandwidth and/or space limitations causing this, I highly doubt all the rhetoric against doing the audio at the original bitdepth would be happening. If 16/48 is as good as 24/48, why don't the studios use 16/48 for the originals, instead of 24/48 being common?

I'm serious about wondering what you want HPforMe. Would it bother you if they started encoding the video at 1440x1080 instead of 1920x1080? If so, can you provide me proof that 1920x1080 is better?

--Darin

Hi Plaz, My release list (in my sig link) attempts to keep a listing of releases for both formats. I also have columns of HDD's PQ & AQ review ratings for different titles. You could sort the worksheet different ways to compare or give me some more detailed info of what exactly you want and I'll try to get you an answer.

I'm not to sure about HDD's reviews on netural format films though, it seems they rate them equally with the exception of PCM and/or TrueHD tracks getting slightly higher ratings automatically. I'd really have to wonder if they are reviewing both and how closely they are comparing them. I dont think it should automatically be a given that PQ is equal between movies, specially with many of the titles (from Paramount) using different codecs for the same title

Looks like Matrix is already back down to number 49 on Amazon. How high did it get at one point, 38? Not very impressive.

Sure is dropping fast now, nothing even close to the performance of Casino Royale.

Look, I am a multi format owner as well, so I like to think I have no biases. But you can't compare a $100 and $120 box set to a single release movie (Casino Royale). Those are good sales numbers for the Matrix considering 90% of the people out there HATE the last two movies (I actually kind of like them).

The Matrix will do great on both HD DVD and BluRay. The key is for BluRay to get off their behinds and get their Java system working. Starting to irk me that it is now almost April and they still cannot get to work. Since I own both, I have tried a similiar system with HD DVD and it is awesome (FF:Toyko Drift). I would love to see this with BluRay movies. I think they could have done some really cool stuff if they had it for Casino Royale.