The Matrix 4K UHD (1999)

[Geoff D]

The Matrix LD has always been super-scarce. What other versions do or don't do has nothing to do with it. But then we knew that.

[Noremac Mij]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

The Matrix LD has always been super-scarce. What other versions do or don't do has nothing to do with it. But then we knew that.

That too. But if you think the prices are this high simply because it’s scarce, then IMO you’re wrong.

[Geoff D]

Uh-huh.

[Noremac Mij]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Uh-huh.

15-20 years ago, one couldn’t sell most of these LD’s for $2. Once teal and orange and altered soundtracks arrived, prices began to increase exponentially. I love it!

[VonMagnum]

425i is still pretty hard to look at her on a 92" screen in zoom mode for widescreen (My laserdisc player still works; I watched Jurassic Park DTS not long ago on LD and ended up sitting in the 3rd row nearly 21' back to make the resolution palatable). The sound was still great, though.

[Noremac Mij]

Originally Posted by VonMagnum

425i is still pretty hard to look at her on a 92" screen in zoom mode for widescreen (My laserdisc player still works; I watched Jurassic Park DTS not long ago on LD and ended up sitting in the 3rd row nearly 21' back to make the resolution palatable). The sound was still great, though.

It doesn’t matter though. You can have a 32K resolution release, but if it has the wrong colours then it might as well not exist.

I’m not a fan of the JP DTS disc. It has a newer transfer and the Kuraray pressing is kind of washed out. The best is either the USA CAV box or the Japan CAV set. JP never looked better or more 35mm correct on any other release. Absolutely love these THX releases. On my OLED, properly calibrated, they look stunning, vivid, with super inky blacks giving a sort of 3D pop to the image that is magical on analog.

[TravisTylerBlack]

Originally Posted by Noremac Mij

That too. But if you think the prices are this high simply because it’s scarce, then IMO you’re wrong.

Scarcity is precisely the reason copies of that particular LD release tend go for such princely sums.

As usual your theories, just like the format to which you so vocally cling, are removed from reality and full of rot.

[Agent Kay]

Originally Posted by Brian81

Damn. Why are people paying so much for these? I just searched Mallrats and I cannot believe people paying that much when there is the Arrow disc available.

One of the last US discs made, and in super low numbers

[Brian81]

Originally Posted by Agent Kay

One of the last US discs made, and in super low numbers

I understand a scarcity issue, but it appears other more common titles are selling for more than I would expect as well. Couldn’t give these things away. Most recent movie I picked up as a LD was Austin Powers.

[VonMagnum]

I bought two laserdiscs in the past 5 years and didn't pay very much for either. One was pre-digital audio with Raquel Welch's Perfect Fitness & Beauty (1982 Raquel doing incredible flexible Yoga poses) and Jessica Hahn's Playboy laserdisc (DVD was impossible to find and from what I read a bad transfer of the laserdisc). Ok, it's laser-smut, but it's unique laser-smut and I always had a thing for both women growing up for somer reason.

The last discs I picked up before those two on eBay was the THX Star Wars Trilogy for like $10 each from Ken's Laser World right when they were starting to get rid of laserdiscs and the newer "edited" laserdisc Star Wars set was already out. I already had the original laserdisc releases (through Columbia's laserdisc club, it was the only way to get them for a reasonable price as in $1 each instead of $70+ they wanted back then for them, but they were like the only widescreen versions of Star Wars for several years. Oh! There's IG-88 and Snaggletooth! I thought they were removed from the film on VHS (in a way they were since they were panned right out of the movie!)

But hey, if laserdisc prices are going to go up (like LPs), I've got over 100 of them in a rack here still including a few rare ones like the TRON: Archive Edition and also the Japanese Widescreen edition (before the Archive Edition came out, it was one of if not the only widescreen version of Tron in existence on home video, to my knowledge).

I never got the RF port mod done for AC3 discs and I think I only own a couple of AC3 discs anyway. I was kind of shocked looking at eBay recently how many DTS laserdiscs were made. I only knew of a few at the time including Jurassic Park. Oddly, it didn't want to play all the way through without the sound dropping out with my Technics DD/DTS decoder for some unknown reason. When I watched it again recently on my current system, half of it was to see if it would play all the way through as I never knew what caused the issue (the player or the decoder. I'd have to power off the decoder and stop/start the player to get it working again at the time). It played all the way through with no issue at all so I assume that Technics decoder was the problem, even though it never once did that with DTS DVDs.

Originally Posted by Noremac Mij

It doesn’t matter though. You can have a 32K resolution release, but if it has the wrong colours then it might as well not exist.

I'm sorry, but even I'm not that hard core (and I had most of the forum here hating every word I said when I first brought up the cyan push issue on the 4K version and how bad the colors were, especially on the newer 2K BD) that I would put up with 425 interlaced analog on a large projector screen as all the inherent issues of analog video become magnified times 5, especially if older players are starting to get long in the tooth for laser alignment, etc. I see color banding and noise issues on virtually every disc. The projector's noise reduction can get rid of a lot of it, but it still looks like smeg compared to even 480p, which itself is a BLUR FEST compared to 2K (let alone 4K). Even the DVD version is a better choice. I tend to go with the fan edit that's out there that uses one color layer from the DVD to get rid of the green and yet still maintains most of the 1080p resolution. It also has the Cinema DTS soundtrack converted to home DTS. It's the closest one out there to the full 35mm experience, IMO. No 425i analog LD is going to even be in the same galaxy as that, OLED or not. You'd have to be virtually blind to not notice the difference.

[TravisTylerBlack]

Originally Posted by VonMagnum

I bought two laserdiscs in the past 5 years and didn't pay very much for either.

You'll find that not much has changed.

Originally Posted by VonMagnum

But hey, if laserdisc prices are going to go up (like LPs), I've got over 100 of them in a rack here

They aren't and they likely never will.

The means to view them no longer exists outside of the ever-dwindling handful of still-functioning players that survive on the secondary market. No sane company would ever seek to produce new models.

[sanjuro_61]

And that, if I'm not mistaken (I'm not) looks exactly like the first DVD release, which has wrong colors (Dat brownish blanket...)

[slimdude]

Originally Posted by Shaw24

I hated BR2049. It was a dull, bloated, retread of the original's themes that didn't need to exist. Plus, you could literally cut 30 minutes from the film and lose absolutely nothing. Every single scene starts and ends with 30 seconds to a minute of characters staring blankly in silence. Villeneuve seemed to want to mimic Blade Runner's contemplative and deliberate pacing, but he seemed to forget that despite its pacing, Blade Runner is a really short and focused film without a single unnecessary scene, plot development, or character. BR2049 was loaded with sub-plots that went nowhere and a villain who made no sense. It was lame..

I agree. Blade Runner 2049 was tedious to sit through, and Harrison Ford didn't come into the movie until two hours later.

[imsounoriginal]

Originally Posted by slimdude

I agree. Blade Runner 2049 was tedious to sit through, and Harrison Ford didn't come into the movie until two hours later.

I also judge movies based on how much screen time Harrison Ford has. Main reason why I hate The Matrix.

[welcometothepartypal]

I forgot what thread I'm in.

[Warm Gun]

Originally Posted by slimdude

I agree. Blade Runner 2049 was tedious to sit through, and Harrison Ford didn't come into the movie until two hours later.

The story would have benefited by omitting him completely.

[Brian81]

Originally Posted by VonMagnum

I bought two laserdiscs in the past 5 years and didn't pay very much for either. One was pre-digital audio with Raquel Welch's Perfect Fitness & Beauty (1982 Raquel doing incredible flexible Yoga poses) and Jessica Hahn's Playboy laserdisc (DVD was impossible to find and from what I read a bad transfer of the laserdisc). Ok, it's laser-smut, but it's unique laser-smut and I always had a thing for both women growing up for somer reason.

The last discs I picked up before those two on eBay was the THX Star Wars Trilogy for like $10 each from Ken's Laser World right when they were starting to get rid of laserdiscs and the newer "edited" laserdisc Star Wars set was already out. I already had the original laserdisc releases (through Columbia's laserdisc club, it was the only way to get them for a reasonable price as in $1 each instead of $70+ they wanted back then for them, but they were like the only widescreen versions of Star Wars for several years. Oh! There's IG-88 and Snaggletooth! I thought they were removed from the film on VHS (in a way they were since they were panned right out of the movie!)

But hey, if laserdisc prices are going to go up (like LPs), I've got over 100 of them in a rack here still including a few rare ones like the TRON: Archive Edition and also the Japanese Widescreen edition (before the Archive Edition came out, it was one of if not the only widescreen version of Tron in existence on home video, to my knowledge).

I never got the RF port mod done for AC3 discs and I think I only own a couple of AC3 discs anyway. I was kind of shocked looking at eBay recently how many DTS laserdiscs were made. I only knew of a few at the time including Jurassic Park. Oddly, it didn't want to play all the way through without the sound dropping out with my Technics DD/DTS decoder for some unknown reason. When I watched it again recently on my current system, half of it was to see if it would play all the way through as I never knew what caused the issue (the player or the decoder. I'd have to power off the decoder and stop/start the player to get it working again at the time). It played all the way through with no issue at all so I assume that Technics decoder was the problem, even though it never once did that with DTS DVDs.




I'm sorry, but even I'm not that hard core (and I had most of the forum here hating every word I said when I first brought up the cyan push issue on the 4K version and how bad the colors were, especially on the newer 2K BD) that I would put up with 425 interlaced analog on a large projector screen as all the inherent issues of analog video become magnified times 5, especially if older players are starting to get long in the tooth for laser alignment, etc. I see color banding and noise issues on virtually every disc. The projector's noise reduction can get rid of a lot of it, but it still looks like smeg compared to even 480p, which itself is a BLUR FEST compared to 2K (let alone 4K). Even the DVD version is a better choice. I tend to go with the fan edit that's out there that uses one color layer from the DVD to get rid of the green and yet still maintains most of the 1080p resolution. It also has the Cinema DTS soundtrack converted to home DTS. It's the closest one out there to the full 35mm experience, IMO. No 425i analog LD is going to even be in the same galaxy as that, OLED or not. You'd have to be virtually blind to not notice the difference.

I agree on LD. I tried watching those ‘Faces’ THX Star Wars discs a handful of years back and couldn’t believe how smeary they looked on a projected 135” screen. And I guess smearing wasn’t the issue but rather trails of objects, in what looks like some kind of video processing artifact. I went on to read that the Definitive Edition discs were actually better - too bad I wasn’t aware of that when I bought what I did many years ago. Last time to get original version marketing by Lucasfilm made me assume those would be the most advanced. I decided to get the two disc DVD sets and even with them being non anamorphic, they upscaled much nicer than the LDs. I ended up picking up 3 LD-S2s because those had a low enough noise floor to where I could still find the format watchable. I have 3 of those because I wanted two yet the second was improperly shipped and damaged. Optical mechanism was not seated when it arrived.

[Agent Kay]

Originally Posted by welcometothepartypal

I forgot what thread I'm in.

Its lasertown Jake

[Noremac Mij]

Originally Posted by Brian81

I agree on LD. I tried watching those ‘Faces’ THX Star Wars discs a handful of years back and couldn’t believe how smeary they looked on a projected 135” screen. And I guess smearing wasn’t the issue but rather trails of objects, in what looks like some kind of video processing artifact. I went on to read that the Definitive Edition discs were actually better - too bad I wasn’t aware of that when I bought what I did many years ago. Last time to get original version marketing by Lucasfilm made me assume those would be the most advanced. I decided to get the two disc DVD sets and even with them being non anamorphic, they upscaled much nicer than the LDs. I ended up picking up 3 LD-S2s because those had a low enough noise floor to where I could still find the format watchable. I have 3 of those because I wanted two yet the second was improperly shipped and damaged. Optical mechanism was not seated when it arrived.

The “Faces” discs pressed by Kuraray are very blurry and in my opinion come from second generation tapes. The USA Definitive CAV box pressed by Mitsubishi (not the Japanese release) is significantly better and it’s also better than the DVD’s. Pioneer LD-S1 and LD-S2 are the best players ever made IMO.

[VonMagnum]

Non-zoomed, some LDs are watchable with noise reduction on. Raquel still looks much sharper than the VHS version. But I just can't see watching The Matrix off LD no matter how rare or right the colors are. It just wouldn't look very good much above 50" IMO. The there's the soundtrack question. The Dolby Digital soundtrack always sucked compared to the DTS one, IMO (I could tell by memory for one scenes I saw it so many times at the theater and later got the Cinema DTS track to compare and it was just as I remembered for those scenes (much more front to back separation). The Atmos track fixed many of the issues of the DD one, even in 5.1 playback, although its dynamic range is still about 7dB lower.