DVD details for for
The Matrix (1999)

Michel Hafner (1 October 1999):
This DVD edition by Warner Brothers of The Matrix (1999), one of the most successful films of the year (critically and at the box office) is currently (end of September 1999) breaking sales records for the medium. Wow! It's selling far better than the DVD of the most successful film of the decade (financially speaking), Titanic (1997). Could it be that this DVD simply has the far better price/performance ratio (it's 5 dollars less and 16:9 enhanced)? Or have the previous VHS and LD sales of Titanic hurt the DVD's potential? I don't know, but I know a couple of people that did not buy the Titanic DVD because it was not enhanced, including me.
I have been looking forward to the DVD version of "The Matrix" for some time. But I was also worried about its quality. All the 35mm prints I have seen were pretty grainy, fuzzy and rather disappointing. Warner Brother's DVD quality track record is mixed. There has been a stubborn problem with excessive grain on many titles, among other things. Reference quality seemed to be elusive. How would the 'grainy' Matrix look on DVD? The answer is now available. Is this Warner Brother's first true reference quality DVD? Did they do everything right for once? The answer in my humble opinion is: almost. It's damn good.
The film master used is very clean and image steadiness is more than satisfying. Contrast rendition is excellent with deep blacks and very good shadow detail. Color rendition is equally good. After a short while it becomes obvious that the scenes in the matrix have a greenish/yellowish tint. Does this not mean that they screwed up the colors? No, it doesn't. The greenish look inside the matrix is accurate and reflects the intentions of the film makers. This is confirmed by various sources including the comment track on the DVD itself. The matrix scenes lack all shades of blue and this causes the greenish/yellowish tint. Blue is too happy a color, according to the Wachowski brothers, and had no place in the sad and fake world of the matrix. The scenes outside the matrix don't lack blue, though.
Image sharpness of this 16:9 enhanced DVD is mostly excellent. Many shots offer superb image detail in textures of clothing or in facial textures, for example. Hardly any shot is soft. But what about grain and noise? I'm very glad that I can report that the grain level is low and never distracting. And, best of all, this has not been achieved with (careless) excessive digital noise removal and its consequences, ugly artifacts. Close inspection of some shots reveals that digital noise and scratch removal has been used and has introduced some artifacts. But except for one instance the artifacts are slight and not distracting. They reduce image sharpness a bit in moving textures and create a couple of times slight visible distortions of the grain texture. The processing has been done with care, thank God, except for that one instance in chapter 15, from 0:50 to 0:54. Here we have a glitch in the form of digital scratch removal going astray. The fine high contrast black and white texture with straight lines on the wall at the left is mistaken for scratches and attacked, causing it to flicker. Too bad this was not fixed. An example for a slight distortion of facial texture can be studied in chapter 4 when Trinity talks to Neo, cheek to cheek. Study the texture on her cheek. Other video artifacts are absent. There is no aliasing and there are no overenhanced edges.
Finally we come to the weakest aspect of this DVD, the compression. No, don't get me wrong, compression is good, it's just not as good as it could be, and not good enough for a verdict of excellent or reference quality. Slight artifacts are in many shots. The film is 136 minutes long. Add to that quite a lof of supplements and the average bit rate is reduced to about 5.5 Mbit/s. Not enough to avoid I-frame pulsing and compression noise on various occasions, it seems. Slight, indeed, but visible on high resolution displays. For example at the start of chapter 13 the pulsing is not difficult to see in the texture of the fabric Neo is lying on and of his sweater. Too bad there were not more bits available.
Overall image quality of this DVD is very good with several aspects approaching reference quality. This DVD looks far better than any 35 mm print I have seen. It combines outstanding sharpness with excellent contrast and color, is very clean and almost free of any distracting artifact of any kind. Fix the scratch removal incident, recompress with a bit rate close to 9 Mbit/s and you have got a reference quality DVD. I know exactly what I want for this Christmas from the WB Santa. A DTS version with no supplements and this higher bit rate. I guess I'm hoping in vain, but as the film shows, without hope and faith there is no happy end. You have to believe... Congratulations to Warner Brothers for this DVD version of "The Matrix". It beat my expectations and is one of their finest efforts so far, if not the best. The supplements are interesting and an asset.