The Matrix Trilogy 4K UHD (1999-2003)

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Opposite for me, I may have been bored out of my gourd when Merv was waffling on in Reloaded (it's like listening to me blather on about HDR, compression blah blah, minus any chocolate orgasm cakes of course) but the action in Reloaded is magnifique. I can still remember sitting there in the cinema as the opening scene unfolded (with Trin blasting through the glass) and I was absolutely stunned by it, I'm actually getting tingles just thinking about revisiting that in 4K. I may well have been baked when I saw it in the cinema but even so, I kinda dug it and I still do.

Mind you, I always thought it was a bit Star Wars prequel-y in the way that a perfectly self-contained original that's as tight as a drum got expanded with a flabbier follow-up that spunked a load more cash on dat VFX and seemingly indulged every whim of its newly-crowned superstar directors, not always for the good of the film. Discussing this reminds me of that Indian dude on the DVD Forums who defended the shit out of these movies every chance he got.

Watching a Matrix movie under the influence is a mistake I will never make again, as that didn't quite work out for me.

[Geoff D]

During that period a lot of my movie watching was done with some chemical assistance, it was a trip when you get blasted with those high-octane opening scenes like Mi3, or that amazing opening scene to Gangs of New York the way it wends its way throughout all the people preparing to fight as the music builds and builds and then BAM - matey kicks open the door and all you can hear is silence.

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

During that period a lot of my movie watching was done with some chemical assistance, it was a trip when you get blasted with those high-octane opening scenes like Mi3, or that amazing opening scene to Gangs of New York the way it wends its way throughout all the people preparing to fight as the music builds and builds and then BAM - matey kicks open the door and all you can hear is silence.

LOL I guess I can relate to that.

I never went sober to the theaters during the 90s. Desperado in particular is a movie experience I will never forget. And a lot of movie watching at home was also done while under the influence.

But those days are long gone now. The only stimulant I enjoy now while watching a movie is a good drink.

[Cook]

Originally Posted by DJR662

Watching a Matrix movie under the influence is a mistake I will never make again, as that didn't quite work out for me.

I know a guy that watched The Grudge in theaters while blitzed on shrooms. Worst trip ever.

[DJR662]

Originally Posted by Cook

I know a guy that watched The Grudge in theaters while blitzed on shrooms. Worst trip ever.

Haha!

[RustinCohle]

Originally Posted by Locutus494

Seriously?! Why do they have to go and put a different UHD logo on the Matrix spine vs the other two?! Is that picture of the new release or the original Matrix UHD already out? It's like they're trying to trigger to OCD people...

I was just at Best Buy and there was one of those shippers for ‘buy a 4K player get three movies free’ and every Matrix copy had an updated/matching 4K spine logo.

[StingingVelvet]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

I know there isn't a reason to cap it but when the spiel on Dolby's own website makes the absurd claim that "generic HDR" i.e. HDR10 is limited to 1000 nits then it's not so strange that people would follow that way of thinking, from consumer to professional alike, and I'm saying that some studios are following that advice and some aren't. You and I know that PQ is based around a 10K nit 2020 gamut container regardless of it being HDR10, HDR10+ or DV, but the amount of times I've read on tech blogs & websites that HDR10 is limited to 1000 nits and P3 gamut - them clearly drinking from the Dobly Kool-Aid - drives me absolutely crazy.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but... is there any real reason to go beyond 1,000 nits in range? Like if HDR was capped at that for all formats would it really be a problem? 1,000 nits is already well above what's on the negative, from what people have told me, and I definitely don't see a need for 1,000 nit movies like Starship Troopers to be any brighter.

[RodChester]

Did an instore pickup for Revolutions at Best Buy today, and my copy of Reloaded from Amazon will be delivered tomorrow. Then all day Saturday will be spent watching the trilogy. I am really excited to see and hear the 4K discs for the sequels. Where is my red pill?

[morphinapg]

Originally Posted by Geoff D

Not really, because they have things like waveform analysis and temporary tone mapping that can help them to visualise content all the way up to 10,000 nits on a 1000 nit monitor, should they wish to do so.

And you can always apply a temporary lower exposure to make sure everything visually looks good in those highlights too. Although if you're paying attention to the waveform typically it will already look just fine in that space. You can even theoretically grade HDR on a good SDR monitor (I've done it) although obviously that's not optimal.

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Maybe this is a stupid question, but... is there any real reason to go beyond 1,000 nits in range? Like if HDR was capped at that for all formats would it really be a problem? 1,000 nits is already well above what's on the negative, from what people have told me, and I definitely don't see a need for 1,000 nit movies like Starship Troopers to be any brighter.

If you're talking about film, the limit on nits would be based on both the exposure, and the film stock. Many film stocks compress highlights in a way similar to how we talk about tonemapping today, and so if you have a good enough film stock, and scan the film in at an extremely high bit depth, and use extreme sharp curves on the highlights, you can retrieve previously flattened out information while looking like natural lighting (although pretty grainy)

With digital it's trickier. Either you protected for that highlight detail by intentionally lowering exposure to begin with, or you have a camera that just naturally captures highlight detail far above the white point of the viewfinder. Objects like the sun and daylight specular highlights can be far above even 10,000 nits.

I took an SDR image that included a sunset where you could just barely make out the details of the sun and clouds around it because they were flattened so much, and I used curves in photoshop to bring out that highlight detail while retaining a natural looking light falloff in the shadows when a temporary exposure filter was applied, and then in 32bpc, I raised exposure to appropriate brightness levels, and sampled how bright the sun was. It ended up being 300,000 nits. (photoshop 32bit files can reach around 78 million nits) I was able to extract 300,000 nit detail from an SDR image, although obviously it wouldn't look amazing because of the bit depth, with a higher bit depth source you can do the same with film or good digital sources and go well above 1000 nits in natural ways.

You can also be morons like some studios and just unnaturally brighten what was already visible. But this often happens for movies that clearly did not protect that original bright highlight detail, whether in the way the film stock handled it, the camera exposure, or the digital format.

tl;dr it's not about brightening the whole movie or taking details that are already visible and making them brighter. That's bad HDR.

[Cook]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Maybe this is a stupid question, but... is there any real reason to go beyond 1,000 nits in range? Like if HDR was capped at that for all formats would it really be a problem? 1,000 nits is already well above what's on the negative, from what people have told me, and I definitely don't see a need for 1,000 nit movies like Starship Troopers to be any brighter.

Even video games dont seem to be capped at 1000. I'm pretty sure Assassins Creed Odyssey's HDR settings allow adjustments up to 3000 nits. I think Origins was capped at 1000.

[morphinapg]

Originally Posted by Cook

Even video games dont seem to be capped at 1000. I'm pretty sure Assassins Creed Odyssey's HDR settings allow adjustments up to 3000 nits. I think Origins was capped at 1000.

Both games go to 4000, although the numbers you see on screen are relative, not real world numbers. The brightness control affects what those numbers actually represent. Most games are actually uncapped and will show detail up to 10,000 nits if available. Those settings simply affect tonemapping to make best use of your display's capabilities.

[Locutus494]

Originally Posted by RustinCohle

I was just at Best Buy and there was one of those shippers for ‘buy a 4K player get three movies free’ and every Matrix copy had an updated/matching 4K spine logo.

Good, so it sounds like the picture Tyrok posted was the original release from May, and the new release has the same logo.

[Cook]

Originally Posted by morphinapg

Both games go to 4000, although the numbers you see on screen are relative, not real world numbers. The brightness control affects what those numbers actually represent. Most games are actually uncapped and will show detail up to 10,000 nits if available. Those settings simply affect tonemapping to make best use of your display's capabilities.

How it must feel to view 10,000 nits:

https://youtu.be/Cil4e-f1VE8

[Geoff D]

Originally Posted by StingingVelvet

Maybe this is a stupid question, but... is there any real reason to go beyond 1,000 nits in range? Like if HDR was capped at that for all formats would it really be a problem? 1,000 nits is already well above what's on the negative, from what people have told me, and I definitely don't see a need for 1,000 nit movies like Starship Troopers to be any brighter.

Heh...the metadata for ST reads as 4000/0.005 max/min MDL (mastering display), 3995 nit MaxCLL (so the absolute brightest point in the film) and 2345 MaxFALL (brightest average scene level). In other words chief, it's way beyond 1000 nits and there are plenty more discs out there from the likes of Sony and Warners that exceed that figure.

1000 nits represents 75% of the 10,000-nit range that the Perceptual Quantiser EOTF is based around (and some in Dolby wanted it even higher at 20K nits), and 1000 really should've been the absolute minimum for what HDR TVs could reach. Anything higher than that is often going to be restricted to the brightest of bright highlights for just that extra touch of realism on top; mightn't sound like much, and I know you love your TV and don't see the need for much more - nobody does when they're wowed by what they've got - but when you see the step-up and take time to get used to it then going back to the former version is hard.

I keep banging on about how 'realistic' and 'natural' this kind of brightness looks on my TV because it does, we see nit levels in real life that greatly exceed these figures just by stepping outside the front door so I'm all for getting moar briteness in the years to come (bearing in mind that Dolby master stuff on a 4000-nit TV). As I said above, there are more discs out there with +1000 nit highlights than people might think, so as and when we start to move into +2000 nit brightness becoming more common then those discs will still have more to give.

[Menteith]

Sorry if this has been answered before, but do the non-4k-blus also include an upgrade picture-wise, or are these the same old blus included in the trilogy set?

[Geoff D]

All the movie Blus have new transfers.

[DJR662]

I just finished watching Reloaded and I have no complaints on how it looked. I'm not an expert when it comes to how these movies should look though, but just like the first one, I liked what I saw.

UnfortunateIy this time I didn't really enjoy the movie itself anymore as much as I usually did years ago. That was a bit unexpected and a letdown tbh. Perhaps I just wasn't in the mood this time, I don't know.

Btw my disc froze twice at around 92 minutes (had to eject it twice before it continued to play) and then at 119 minutes or so, my X1000 all of a sudden shut itself down. Strange...

[gil2k]

Originally Posted by DJR662

I just finished watching Reloaded and I have no complaints on how it looked. I'm not an expert when it comes to how these movies should look though, but just like the first one, I liked what I saw.

UnfortunateIy this time I didn't really enjoy the movie itself anymore as much as I usually did years ago. That was a bit unexpected and a letdown tbh. Perhaps I just wasn't in the mood this time, I don't know.

Btw my disc froze twice at around 92 minutes (had to eject it twice before it continued to play) and then at 119 minutes or so, my X1000 all of a sudden shut itself down. Strange...

Mine also froze close to the end. Same with Revolutions. Had to unplug my X700 completely. Had no problems resuming after.

I swear, it's always Warner discs that I'm only having these issues with (and my player is up to date). Happened with the first Matrix and on my LG UP970 had the same freezing issues with Blade Runner 2049 and the Nolan Batman films. It's always near the end of the movie too.

[Vangeli]

I've just been watching on my Xbox One X for the past two or so months after learning that they fixed the forced RGB conversion problem and I haven't had a single playback issue.

But then the Blu-ray app appears to be updated regularly and the Xbox itself gets monthly updates too, so everything just works. Haven't turned on my X800 since.

[Fang Zei]

I probably would’ve picked this up had it been a clean upgrade of the ultimate matrix collection, which I never got around to picking up back in the bd days. Remastered 1080p’s I can enjoy in the meantime on my non-4k hardware setup = good, but no Animatrix and missing the last three dvd’s worth of extras from the umc = no sale. The original movie’s 20th is literally next year and WB is guaranteed to go back to the well with these titles at least one more time. I can wait.

The Animatrix was apparently never released separately on bd as its own standalone sku (unless I’m mistaken). So even if I only wanted that I’d have to ebay it or something. But simply throwing in the existing bd with the next reissue would be enough for me, and they could probably fit those last three dvd’s worth of extras on a single bd25.