The Lord of the Rings Extended Blu-ray Trilogy is out on June 28. I've been waiting for this one. So far, the only version I have is theatrical on DVD.

You mean it gets even LONGER?!!!

Yeah, kind of like The Truman Show. We get to watch Frodo brush his teeth and take his morning constitutional every morning. Also will be interesting to see if Frodo and Sam Gamgee are gay, like I have suspected.

I liked the Extended releases, as they almost serve the purpose of making entirely new movies. Two Towers is the most dramatically changed, because the added scenes alter the pacing. I also loved the opening of Fellowship, retracing the book's "concerning hobbits" introduction. That said, I'm not sure ROTK needed to be any longer...if anything, they should have ended the theatrical cut after Aragorn is crowned, and left the Grey Havens for the Extended version

For once the extended editions of a movie actually ad a lot to them. I WILL be picking this set up.

I can't watch the theatrical version after watching the extended version. This is one set of movies where they really did a great job with the extended versions and it wasn't to just rip off consumers...

the extended version, in my view, permits us to get a deeper understanding of many characters in the story, and that happens mostly when things are not hectic.

i'm not interested either to watch the theatrical version, but buying the BR version? probably not, as the dvd version is very good looking.

I agree. The DVD is one of the best I've seen. I'd rank it up there with North by Northwest, which I think it the best looking DVD available.

I wouldn't waste my money on the BR copies, but I read an interview with Peter Jackson (do not recall where) where he stated how disappointed he was with the theatrical version transfer to BR and that he was personally going to be involved with the extended version transfer. This is also why it is coming out so much later than the theatrical version.

A few friends are already planning a LOTR day in my HT as soon as I get these.

That's what I've heard about "North by Northwest." I have yet to view my copy, though.

Michael d: "but I read an interview with Peter Jackson (do not recall where) where he stated how disappointed he was with the theatrical version transfer to BR and that he was personally going to be involved with the extended version transfer. This is also why it is coming out so much later than the theatrical version."

I've also read the same things as you.

an excellent review of the new BR release can be found here:
http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-The-Motion-Picture-Trilogy-Blu-ray/12237/#Review

Lowry Digital is the reason why it's so good. They do amazing work.

Thanks J.B. That's a good read.

The series never really did much for me but the way you all talk about these extended releases, I'm even getting excited!

when you've seen the extended versions, you'll never regret it.

TWSS

I did that with the extended editions on DVD a few years back... I posted all about it on here way back when...

Long story short: It was very painful (literally) to sit for that long. Even with many breaks throughout the day.

There will be lots of wine and hobbit food all day. It'll be alright.

you say "painful"! you're right.
when i got the 3 LOTR Extended version box, i watched the 3 parts and then went on right away to watch every little docu. on the discs, including the running commentaries on the movies themselves.
i guess it took me around 7 days to see it all.

since then, i've watched the movies about 12 times, but not because it's THAT good, but because the whole thing is so long that when you see something in the 3rd movie that links with something in the first one, you can't remember what it was, it's so long ago...you've forgotten.
it's true that for a while now my memory isn't what it used to be. (I've heard that before!).

Yea, you are just as naive as I was.
I planned it out with food breaks, time to get up and stretch for 30+ minutes to play my MAME arcade, pinball, etc, time to get outside, etc... Each break was scheduled to get longer and longer. By the time we started the 3rd movie, we had already lost 2 of the people that were there (it was a small number to begin with) and the rest of us were dreading the amount of time that was still left... and we were all big fans.

Good luck. When I told a good friend of mine that I pre-ordered them, he said "Hey, we should do a movie day and watch them all again... -long pause- or maybe not." We both chuckled about it.

Sweet, thanks for the heads up. shows up as $83.99 on amazon. can anyone find a better price?

DVD Planet has it for $62.24 with free shipping. I've never used them though...


LOTR Extended Blu-Ray at DVD Planet

(Funny, I used DVDPriceSearch.com and DVD Planet to get this price on a Blu-Ray... Those companies and their retro usages of 'DVD')

Or DeepDiscount has it at least for $1 less than Amazon...
$82.99 LOTR Ext Blu at Deep Discount

I did a movie day for the Extended DVD's a while back as well. It went pretty well. I think only one or two people made it through the entire thing. Multiple others were in and out for parts of it during the day.

You better have REALLY comfy furniture to sit on.

Maybe I'll do it again with the new ones if I ever put in a HT in the basement.

I plan on inviting some friends over and viewing them over 3 separate days instead.

I wonder if the new color timing in FOTR that some are complaining about was intentional or not? Something tells me that it's not and if it is the case, that will probably mean another exchange program... what a pain...

For my fellow Canadians, Amazon.ca has finally something cheaper than Amazon.com, the trilogy is $64.99 vs $83.99. Futureshop also has it for $64.99.

i've seen that a few times.

But you have to pay in hockey pucks.

Thanks for the heads up.
Ordered via Amazon along with the bowling ball and stemware Mark requested I order to tempt fate as per the Purolator thread.

Indeed. Their stellar work on Once Upon a Time in the West was recently released on blu-ray as well.

I decided to go ahead and order the LoTR extended box set, even though I half-hate the movies. I never liked Elijah Wood, and he's a total whiner as Frodo. Maybe that's true to the source material, since I've never read the books, but still, I think it makes it worse that it's him. Sean Bean annoys me a lot, too, and unfortunately he seems to be one of the go-to actors if you're making a fantasy movie or series. That's a mark against Game of Thrones, though of course I'll still watch it. Viggo Mortensen also seemed not badass enough as Aragorn. Peter Jackson has an off-putting ego at times as well, but I'll begrudgingly admit he made some visually memorable movies, if nothing else.

Oh, the reason I went ahead and ordered is I got that $100 credit for buying the 4 GB Xbox 360 w/ Kinect when it was a deal of the day on Amazon.com earlier in the week. So... LoTR, volume 4 of Bloom County, and an OXO pie server. Came out to $101.20, so I paid $1.20.

I'm reading the LoTR books to my son. Frodo does not come across as a whiner in them.

Good to know. Maybe one of these days I'll actually get around to reading some Tolkien.

Hey!!!!


Oh. . . .it's Sean Bean you said. . . .

Carry on.

Not being familiar with that movie, I had to look it up. Here's a link to a review that agrees with you. Screencaps look really good indeed.

For 13 bucks on Amazon it's a no-brainer.

Amazon sells lobotomy kits for $13?

Ha ha. He should be your nemesis.

Well, $13 and change.

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.

i had never heard of this yellow filtering of the image in the first part;
in neutral colored parts of certain scenes, can you see the yellowish tint?
if it can't be seen, then it could have been eliminated in color timing (color adjustments/post processing).
of course, if there IS a yellow color tint to the film, it would be seen only if the monitor has been calibrated.

often, a UV filter is used in front of lenses and some of those filters have a very slight yellow tinge, like on the Kodak 2B UV filter; this could be what they're talking about.

I just bought it yesterday as well. I am looking forward to auditioning some of it this weekend. I haven't really watched it since I bought the extended DVD edition so long ago. Hurry up long weekend!!!!!

I'd just throw away all of this talk about any tinting. Now on AVS, there's no mention of yellow tinting, it's all about green and or teal tinting. I doubt if any of them even know what they are talking about with any accuracy.

Isn't like 2/3rds of the male population colour blind anyway?

I purchase mine 1 hour ago and will probably watch FOTR tonight.
The whole discussion about the color timing change is a green tint that was applied on the whole movie. It is specially noticeable when the background is snow and the snow looks green.
http://blubrew.com/2011/06/16/the-fellowship-of-the-ring-extended-edition/
In any case, there will be probably be an exchange program so I'm not really losing anything.

From what I've read on various forums, the remaster of FOTR had a teal/cyan tint applied to the entire film.

Although it's more subtle than these other films, the trend right now in Hollywood seems to be
Teal and Orange.

Can you tell a little bit about the exchange program? I'm not familiar with it. I've seen something at BB about exchanging DVD for BD, but I don't know the details of that one either.

UPS just delivered mine. I’ll probably pop them in after work to make sure the disks are working but don’t plan to watch them until this weekend. With my regular Friday off and the holiday it’s a four day weekend, perfect for a marathon.

Well I had time to pop in the Fellowship just to make sure it worked and got a bit of a scare. At first absolutely nothing happened, well except my Oppo locked up. Having had this sort of thing happen before with my previous Oppo I unplugged and plugged back in the power cord and the disks loaded and played normally.

I watched a few scenes that I’ve seen 100s of time while testing my system. So without even doing an A/B comparison (which should be easy because it looks like the chapter breaks sync up with the DVD version) I can already say a few things.

In most scenes the PQ is noticeably sharper, though in a few scenes I don’t think there is a noticeable difference. In these cases the original DVD scenes was already ultra-sharp looking. In the scenes that look better not only is the image sharper but the colour depth is better. Both combine to give a more “3D” or deeper looking image. The better colour depth is even very noticeable in the dark scenes in the Mines of Moria.

Only two things jumped out at me about the audio quality. First was that in a few scenes where in the original DVD there is some sibilance in Gandalf’s voice it’s much worse in the BD version. OTOH, in the Mines of Moria DVD version were the background music actually drowned out the scene it’s toned down a bit in the BD version complementing rather than overshadowing the on screen action. As for the LFE and surround sound I couldn’t detect any noticeable difference.

Also, I can say if the colour was off or not. If the whole movie was made that way I don’t see it being an issue though it might be noticeable A/B comparing or initially switching between movies.

Here's what High-Def Digest says:

I had read elsewhere with a professional reviewer's comments that when they remastered, things went green and nobody knew if it was intentional or deliberate. Mine has been shipped to my house from Amazon but I am out of town until later today. I may have to pop it in when I get home this evening, but I suspect that I will see the same thing.

I only saw the first part of FOTR and a couple of scenes of the second part. I think the picture quality is a big improvement over the DVD. As for the green tint, it's not noticeable everywhere but in some shots, the skin tones seem a bit off. Where I find it the noticeable is when there is some white background like snow.
Keep in mind that if I hadn't read the reviews I would have probably never noticed that but since I know it's there, obviously my mind is looking for it.

As for the audio, it was already excellent on the DVDs but it seems to me that the LFE is stronger on the BD. It is definitely demo worthy.

@Catbrat: typically, when studios recognize that they made a mistake on the transfer, they'll make an announce stating that I exchange program will be in place for people that already purchased the movies to have a proper transfer. You would then call a number, explain the situation and they they would have you send the discs with a proof of purchase. That happened to me already twice, for Gladiator and the Matrix trilogy (Revolutions disc although in this case I didn't have to send the disc back)

Thanks. Never heard of this exchange program. I've never seen any of the announcements either. Where do you find the announcements?

Since I heard it was a yellow tinting problem, I was looking for extra yellow and yup I seen extra yellow in parts of the movie, but no extra green. I wasn't looking for green. Funny how we only see what we are looking for.

Usually, when I google for reviews, the reviewer will already mention about the problem, that is the case for FOTR with the green tint (http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/The-Lord-of-the-Rings-The-Fellowship-of-the-Ring-Blu-ray/19929/#Review), and that was the case for Gladiator and the excessive DNR, color change and disappearing arrows (http://www.blu-ray.com/movies/Gladiator-Blu-ray/4735/#Review). Then, if it is a long awaited high expectation movie, it is just a matter of time before the studios announce an exchange program and the info can usually be found by googling it or in audio/video forums.
Here is a list of a few movies that had an exchange program http://forum.blu-ray.com/blu-ray-movies-...t-programs.html
Other movies that have issues are sometimes re-released a few month later as remastered edition (ie: Gangs of New York, The Fifth Element)

Thanks. I wasn't aware of these. I ordered the missing episode guide for my Firefly blu-ray edition. I was keeping my DVD set, so I could reference the guide with it. I didn't know I was missing one until I read about it in your last reference.

I watched FOTR last night and thought it looked and sounded fantastic! After reading all the noise about the green tint and whatnot, I didn't find it bothered me at all. I did spot it in a few scenes but not sure if I would have noticed had I not heard about the controversy. I did find the movie appeared somewhat dark at times, scenes like the fighting in Moria, I couldn't tell what was happening some of the time. I found that far more disturbing than any green tint. Anyone else notice that?

Some of the forums, especially blu-ray.com and avs went totally apesh@t and overboard! I found the discussion at hometheaterforum to be much more informative and civil. http://www.hometheaterforum.com/forum/th...tion-in-blu-ray

I found the opposite. In the scenes in the Mines of Moria I thought the black levels were far better than in the DVD version. There were no times when I couldn’t vividly see the image except where it seemed intended like early close-ups of Gandalf when only his face is lit. The contrast also seemed much better in those scenes. Also there seemed to be more depth of colour which could also have been attributable to the better black levels. Add to that the sharper looking image and the entire effect was much more 3 dimensional.

Note I’ve only looked at it on my 134”screen so I’m not sure what if any differences I would oneitce on my 46” one.

"Note I’ve only looked at it on my 134”screen so I’m not sure what if any differences I would oneitce on my 46” one"

Gee I feel so small with only 42...

I did read a few other posts where others noticed the darkness too. It could also just be that my tv is not properly calibrated. I did it awhile ago (uears_ with DVD Essentials not even the HD version. Is there a free calibration tool one can download from thet net? I use an HTPC so it would be pretty easy to use.

I’m not sure about calibration tools. I use my projector a lot so the image needs re-calibrated quite often. So I’ve just taken to using the split screen feature on my projector to calibrate for different inputs since I use different calibrations for movies and video games. I may not be getting a “perfect” image doing this but I do get the perfect image for me.

i said earlier on this thread that i wouldn't buy LOTR Extended on BR.

i could not resist and bought it today; cheaper on amazon.ca than on amazon.com by about $5.

you guys can all tell me i lie all the time if you wish.

i already had the DVD version which is very good looking.

I at least feel really bad about buying it. I don't know if I'll even be able to make myself watch any of them all the way through. Ha ha.

there is a very easy way to calibrate black levels quickly and without using any calibrating equipment;
in a dark room, turn the tv on to the DVD/BR input, and keep the player OFF;
increase the brightness to the point where you can easily see it's gray;
then, slowly decrease the brightness to the point where it is at it's minimum (darkest point);
if you decrease the brightness one more notch, the screen will NOT be any darker; and if you increase the brightness one notch, the screen will be brighter than it's minimum brightness.

this gives me exactly the same brightness as when i use a calibration DVD and it's much more simple and fast.

We just watched the first movie yesterday. I'm not sure why anyone would suggest there is no improvement over the DVD version or report color errors. I found it to be of outstanding image and sound quality. Significantly better than the DVD version. I sit 12' away from a 8' wide 2.35 screen. I do my own video calibration as well. If you have a 'small'ish', in comparison to my set up display, you may not find it worth while. Sound quality is much better, regardless.

Maybe the day i get off the damn fence and buy an Oppo BRP like i had planned, i will finally see what all this hype is about.

There is definitely a green tint to the movie. Nice YouTube video comparison:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwcm-73kZE8&feature=youtube_gdata_player

MY TV is supposed to b known for having a red push, so maybe it will balance out for me?

Maybe i'll head down to some store that is playing the movie on all the big screens to check it out.
It is too easy for someone to add a filter onto a youtube video to enhance a point. I wonder how much of this depends on the colour temp to which people have their screens set.