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I just received the Matrix Trilogy collection yesterday from Amazon, and was pleased to see that the boxes and discs were intact in exactly the way they were intended to be packed. Before I go into my review and few nits, let me give some background info:
About 5 months ago I picked up a PS3 and joined the format neutral crowd. Since I don't have an HDMI receiver, but I do have TrueHD capability through analog inputs, initially I was buying everything that was available on both platforms only on HD DVD. Soon I realized that I was having a lot of problems with audio dropouts, screen freezes, and even startup issues with HD DVD, and none of these problems were present (that hadn't been fixed by firmware updates) on my PS3 blu-ray player. Add to this that terrible dry spell on HD DVD in Feb-March and I started to switch exclusively to buying Blu-Ray. Within the last month or so, I've noticed HD DVD really making a resurgence, and with the release of the Matrix I realized I couldn't wait until Blu-Ray gets their act together with the Java business. So I decided to buy my first HD DVD in about 3-4 months, having the highest hopes.
Unfortunately, within the first 3 minutes, I was again disappointed by the Matrix. At 2:50 into the movie, my HD-A1 froze for about 3 second, then continued on, only the audio was out of sync from then on. So I would have to bookmark, stop, hit play, wait through the intro FBI message and such, then seek to the bookmark, and continue. It continued this way without a problem until about 15 minutes into the movie, when the same thing happened again. Then again 2-3 minutes after that. Finally from this point I was in the clear - it never happened throughout the rest of the movie. I don't have to tell you how supremely frustrating this is when you're psyched to watch a premier film like the Matrix in glorious HD.
As for the movie itself, I was completely blown away. All of the reviews are correct (of course). The picture is just phenomenal, extremely crisp in nearly all shots, despite how dark the movie is. Characters just seem to jump out at you from the screen. You can see the pores on Reeves face and the subtle shade from his shave, or the small pockmark scars on Fishburns face. It was especially impressive during the few CGI scenes (with the sentinals); the detail was just unbelievable, and even with so much detailed motion being shown, I caught absolutely no compression artifacts. The ONLY area throughout the entire movie that I caught any kind of a blemish was in a VERY dark scene, when they were trying to hide from the sentinal that was hunting them. Fishburn's face is shrouded in darkness, and during those few seconds, you can see quite a bit of noise in the image. I'm almost positive that this is probably on the original, however, so the transfer shouldn't be faulted.
The sound was phenomenal as well in TrueHD. I will say I didn't detect as much detail or separation as in Batman Begins, but then that's pretty tough to top. What I DID notice was that they seemed to tighten up the LFE quite a bit. In my SD DVD copy, I get a LOT of "boominess" out of my sub (and I have a very tight sub), and this was greatly improved upon. I notice more extension in the bass as well. Aurally, the 10 minutes of film from the minigun attack on the agents through the helicopter crash into the building is as close as I get to heaven.
Overall, this was a phenomenal experience, and I can't wait to view the other two movies. I'm not one of the 90% (the number I've heard touted) that hated all but the first installment. Granted, they weren't AS original, but the end of Reloaded has a neat twist to it. Hopefully my audio problem will go away for these.
About 5 months ago I picked up a PS3 and joined the format neutral crowd. Since I don't have an HDMI receiver, but I do have TrueHD capability through analog inputs, initially I was buying everything that was available on both platforms only on HD DVD. Soon I realized that I was having a lot of problems with audio dropouts, screen freezes, and even startup issues with HD DVD, and none of these problems were present (that hadn't been fixed by firmware updates) on my PS3 blu-ray player. Add to this that terrible dry spell on HD DVD in Feb-March and I started to switch exclusively to buying Blu-Ray. Within the last month or so, I've noticed HD DVD really making a resurgence, and with the release of the Matrix I realized I couldn't wait until Blu-Ray gets their act together with the Java business. So I decided to buy my first HD DVD in about 3-4 months, having the highest hopes.
Unfortunately, within the first 3 minutes, I was again disappointed by the Matrix. At 2:50 into the movie, my HD-A1 froze for about 3 second, then continued on, only the audio was out of sync from then on. So I would have to bookmark, stop, hit play, wait through the intro FBI message and such, then seek to the bookmark, and continue. It continued this way without a problem until about 15 minutes into the movie, when the same thing happened again. Then again 2-3 minutes after that. Finally from this point I was in the clear - it never happened throughout the rest of the movie. I don't have to tell you how supremely frustrating this is when you're psyched to watch a premier film like the Matrix in glorious HD.
As for the movie itself, I was completely blown away. All of the reviews are correct (of course). The picture is just phenomenal, extremely crisp in nearly all shots, despite how dark the movie is. Characters just seem to jump out at you from the screen. You can see the pores on Reeves face and the subtle shade from his shave, or the small pockmark scars on Fishburns face. It was especially impressive during the few CGI scenes (with the sentinals); the detail was just unbelievable, and even with so much detailed motion being shown, I caught absolutely no compression artifacts. The ONLY area throughout the entire movie that I caught any kind of a blemish was in a VERY dark scene, when they were trying to hide from the sentinal that was hunting them. Fishburn's face is shrouded in darkness, and during those few seconds, you can see quite a bit of noise in the image. I'm almost positive that this is probably on the original, however, so the transfer shouldn't be faulted.
The sound was phenomenal as well in TrueHD. I will say I didn't detect as much detail or separation as in Batman Begins, but then that's pretty tough to top. What I DID notice was that they seemed to tighten up the LFE quite a bit. In my SD DVD copy, I get a LOT of "boominess" out of my sub (and I have a very tight sub), and this was greatly improved upon. I notice more extension in the bass as well. Aurally, the 10 minutes of film from the minigun attack on the agents through the helicopter crash into the building is as close as I get to heaven.
Overall, this was a phenomenal experience, and I can't wait to view the other two movies. I'm not one of the 90% (the number I've heard touted) that hated all but the first installment. Granted, they weren't AS original, but the end of Reloaded has a neat twist to it. Hopefully my audio problem will go away for these.
