'Matador' -- High-Def Digest review

[PeterB]

Finally got to review the last of the four Weinstein launch titles:

http://hddvd.highdefdigest.com/matador.html

Took so long because my first copy was horribly defective, with terrible field-mismatched video. Thankfully, the replacement looks very good. And the movie is such a total sleeper I still would have recommended it even if the transfer had been mediocre. If nothing else, you gotta rent it.

[DeSade]

I picked this up today, I'm hoping to give it a spin tomorrow night and enjoy it!

[krammer]

I'm skippin all Weinstein titles. Obviously something has been overlooked during their QC checks. Hence the Toshiba having trouble reading the discs. Not a very good impression for a new studio jumpin into the HD fray.

If ya got the 360 & the HD DVD add-on drive, give some Weinstein titles a spin & report back if you get the same issues.

Thanks

[Topshot]

Originally Posted by krammer

If ya got the 360 & the HD DVD add-on drive, give some Weinstein titles a spin & report back if you get the same issues.

Thanks

I'm adding it to my Netflix list.

I'll post a review of The Matador on my Xbox HD-DVD player after I watch it.

[Tejstar]

This is worth more than a rental, it should be in everyones collections. One of the best films of the year and it's good to hear the audio visuals are top notch. Definite must for me!

[Headhunter]

I've been curious about this film, think I'll pick it up (have the "Bond fever" since catching Casino Royale last week).

Originally Posted by JRNorwood

I don't understand why this site give HD-DVD a free ride when compared to Blu-ray? If this was a Blu-ray disc that froze up they would have thoroughly panned it. What's with the bias, are you on Microsoft's payroll?

The review was based on the replacement copy, how is that giving a free ride?

[dkny75]

After hearing about all the problems with the Weinstein discs, I hessitantly put in my copy of the Matador into my A1 (fm 2.0) and low and behold, it loaded as fast as every other HD DVD I own (except for Chronos which took forever) and played back the entire movie without any problems. What a great movie btw. I thought it looked amazing but the audio was pretty weak. Hopefully I'll have the same luck when the other Weinstein releases arrive.

[DeSade]

Ok, just got done watching this movie on my new 360 HD DVD drive and I have to say, it was an awesome movie. Brosnan was superb, Kinnear was superb, just an excellent, excellent movie.

Video quality was very good, what I have come to expect from HD video, although this is the first movie I have watched on HD DVD, everything else has been mpeg2 download material.

I have 12 whole movies to watch now! Can't wait to dig into more!

Anyway, I recommend this movie highly, the chemistry between Kinnear and Brosnan was magical and I just found myself smiling in awe of how great their performances were!

There you have my very blunt review! lol

P.S. - I had no problems at all with watching this disc, it loaded right up and played fine on the 360 drive!!

[hmurchison]

And now for your pleasure.

Peter B meets Snoop Dogg in the review of the Matador.

http://sites.gizoogle.com/index2.php...2Fmatador.html

[PeterB]

Hahaha! That is hilarious. Never heard of Gizzagoogle or whatever before. Perhaps we should relaunch the whole site in Snoop-speak?



BTW, glad no one else seems to be having boot-up problems. Hopefully they just sent all of us reviewers bad discs!

[Topshot]

Movie worked just fine on my 360 HD-DVD drive as well. For a half second something pop0up up that said this disc was readable or something like that, but then it worked flawlessly.

I really liked the film.

[cordillius]

using 360 add-on through VGA-
wolf creek played properly with no problems, and I'm now waiting on the matador from amazon.

[xradman]

My replacement copy of Matador played flawlessly on my XA1. But the deleted segments looked awful. Easily the worst video quality I have seen in a long time. It played as wide screen in my setup rather than as pillarboxed and window boxed (black bars on all 4 sides) video as stated in Peter's review. The video looked as if there was very bad interlacing combing artifact. Did anyone else see this or is this problem specific to my setup?

[Jonalan34]

I got Matador HD DVD yesterday and it played through whole movie without trouble. I really enjoyed watch it.

[irascian]

Originally Posted by cordillius

using 360 add-on through VGA-
wolf creek played properly with no problems, and I'm now waiting on the matador from amazon.

Have you checked the extra's? The main feature plays fine on my XBox, but the main extra refuses to play the picture, giving a status code error, and the other extra's all appear vertically stretched. Very odd!

Getting back on topic, "Matador" is a great movie, but my concern about the HD-DVD version is like that of too many other titles - the original Standard DVD was a superb transfer, so there really isn't that much extra to be gained from an HD-DVD version for those of us NOT running 1080i/p huge screens and high-end gear. I'd far rather have the companies release titles that had a less than sterling standard DVD transfer a few years ago, get spruced up for HD-DVD. Batman Begins and The Hulk also fall into this category (although it's interesting given all the rave reviews that the latest Home Cinema Choice magazine which is an HD-DVD special gives Batman Begins the lowest picture quality of all the titles reviewed - a lowly six!)