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With great anticipation, I purchased the Extended Edition BluRay collection of the Lord of the Rings (LOTR) trilogy after work yesterday, and "cancelled all appointments" to start giving the disks a spin. I really wanted this to be an exciting cinematic experience, since 1) I really like these movies, and 2) the advance buzz was very favorable.
When the first screen came up, the selection panel for "Play", "Scenes", Languages", "Special Features", with a shot of the interior of Bag End (Bilbo Baggins's home in the Shire, not the subwoofer), I thought "wow, this is going to be incredible" -- rich colors, perfect detail, almost 3D visual impact. Unfortunately, that was the only visually exciting view of the evening. As the main feature rolled along, the colors appears washed out in areas not in shadow, the contrast was often way overblown, and all in all it looked like a bad attempt at up-rezzing from a DVD, not a carefully crafted hi-def remaster from the original film elements. I jumped around to various scenes with various lighting schemes and felt the same way about all of them. My projector is set on Eco-mode, so it is not pushing the limits of light output. My room was dark, so it was not stray light washing out the screen. So far, these disks are a major visual let down.
The sound, however, is everything you could want it to be and more. Finely detailed when appropriate, bombastic when needed, voices tracking the movement of the characters on screen instead of just spewing from center, and on and on. The sound is about as close to perfect as I've ever heard on a movie sound track. So it looks like C- for video and A+ for sound.
I wonder if I got a bad copy or whether this is really the "artist's vision" for the video? I've read elsewhere about the alleged "greenish blue tint" on Fellowship of the Ring, and that is not what I observed as the problem with the transfer. This weekend I'm going to compare this edition with the DVD set (which I recall finding to be delightful on multiple viewings, but that was a few years ago by now) and see if my first (negative) impression of the BluRays is a lasting one.
Burke
When the first screen came up, the selection panel for "Play", "Scenes", Languages", "Special Features", with a shot of the interior of Bag End (Bilbo Baggins's home in the Shire, not the subwoofer), I thought "wow, this is going to be incredible" -- rich colors, perfect detail, almost 3D visual impact. Unfortunately, that was the only visually exciting view of the evening. As the main feature rolled along, the colors appears washed out in areas not in shadow, the contrast was often way overblown, and all in all it looked like a bad attempt at up-rezzing from a DVD, not a carefully crafted hi-def remaster from the original film elements. I jumped around to various scenes with various lighting schemes and felt the same way about all of them. My projector is set on Eco-mode, so it is not pushing the limits of light output. My room was dark, so it was not stray light washing out the screen. So far, these disks are a major visual let down.
The sound, however, is everything you could want it to be and more. Finely detailed when appropriate, bombastic when needed, voices tracking the movement of the characters on screen instead of just spewing from center, and on and on. The sound is about as close to perfect as I've ever heard on a movie sound track. So it looks like C- for video and A+ for sound.
I wonder if I got a bad copy or whether this is really the "artist's vision" for the video? I've read elsewhere about the alleged "greenish blue tint" on Fellowship of the Ring, and that is not what I observed as the problem with the transfer. This weekend I'm going to compare this edition with the DVD set (which I recall finding to be delightful on multiple viewings, but that was a few years ago by now) and see if my first (negative) impression of the BluRays is a lasting one.
Burke
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