Well. I bought the LOTR blu-ray extended version yesterday at BB for $75, with tax. Each movie is divided in half with 2 hours per disc. I'm assuming that is because of the uncompressed audio format in multiple versions, ie with and without comments, in various languages.
I watched the 4 hours of the first movie last night.
Concerning the video. It is just gorgeous. I've never noticed how beautiful and natural the woodland scenes were with DVD version. But this one is exceptional. I read, I think on AVS, that a yellow filter was applied to the first movie. If that is the case it looks like it may have enhanced the colors, to me, being a positive thing. It looked that good.
Concerning the audio. I've been playing around with my equalizer settings to something I liked better than what Pioneer's MCACC provides. But this was different. With it in that setting, the sound was just too bright and it hurt my ears after listening to the sound track for about 30 minutes. So I got out the mic and tripod and recalibrated the sound for the default MCACC setting, except I reset the L/R from Large to Small. (Center already set to small). This made all the difference in the world. Now everything sounds more balanced and natural. I'm going to have to reprogram my Harmony 1100 remote for natural, and enhanced modes, depending on the sound track.
