The Matrix in HD?

[YOyoYOhowsDAjello]

Originally posted by: Sonikku
4x3 DVD's are in 640x480 interlaced. (at least in the United States with the NTSC standard)
16x9 DVD's are in 854x480 interlaced. (see above)

Also, the movies in HDTV on channels like HBO, MAX, Showtime Ect. are often cropped to fit the 16x9 aspect ratio.
The Star Wars films, Matrix films, LOTR films, Bladerunner and many, many more are in 2.35:1. To fill the modern HD tv it is cropped to 1.78:1. (AKA 16x9)
I would not worry too much of not having true HD material just yet. If you have a good PC with a top notch DVD decoder you'll probably fine the upscaling is so good that you might not be able to notice.

You're right on the Matrix being 2.35:1 instead of 1.85:1 like I said above. I'm on a 4:3 monitor right now rather than the 16:9 display I usually use so it didn't jump out at me as being extra widescreen.

 

[kylebisme]

Originally posted by: Sonikku
4x3 DVD's are in 640x480 interlaced. (at least in the United States with the NTSC standard)
16x9 DVD's are in 854x480 interlaced. (see above).

No, they are all 480i which is 720x480. Some are designed to be streched to 16:9 and others squished to 4:3, but they are still all 480i.


As for the matrix being 2.35:1, it is in the capture from the DVD here (when scaled to fill 16:9 like a dvd player does). but if you look at the HD capture here you see that is 16:9 and you see more at the top and botom of the view, so it looks like it was orignally filmed 16:9 or an even lower aspectratio.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: TheSnowman
As for the alising xtknight mentioned, I think he was right. I orginally just looked at the picture on my ED plasma running my desktop at 1280x720 which obviously isn't the best way to judge such things, but draging the pic over to my CRT monitor I see noticeable signs of upscaling. And while it is true that 35mm film isn't rightly HD in itself, it is an anlog format and shouldn't show alising like in that shot if it was transfered straight to 1080p.

That's what I was thinking too. I just assumed that they wouldn't do a trivial digital upscale if they were to release an HD version. If they have the materials to make an IMAX version, they have to materials to make a real HD version. Speaking of which, I wonder if it'll ever be possible to show an analog upscaling on a digital-driven display (done on-the-fly)? It also looks like that when it's downscaled. I watch (1920x)1080i HDTV on my 1280x1024 LCD, and it looks the exact same way.