Return of the King Extended version

[jamison]

Anyone watched the extended version of ROTK yet? I got my copy tuesday off amazon.com. this is the first time I held out and didnt buy the regular version. Wow talk about a new reference disk for surround sound. The DTS-ES track is amazing. so many times I jumped from the soundtrack. I admit I had it cranked loud, at -10 volume
bass was phenomenal, in the one scene where gandalf is fighting the Nazgul and he blows up gandalfs stafff, the background was aleady loud with fighting and then the staff explodes out of the center channel. i guess wow is all i can say. this soundtrack has got to be the best reference out there right now. only complaint was that the video was a bit soft. a lot of it could be that most of the scenes were battle scenes and the dreary darkness of mordor.

[htfan14]

Sounds great, I picked up a copy last Tuesday as well but hav'nt had the 4 hours to sit back and watch it yet. Wife is away for the next couple nights so I will have a chance to crank it!!

[eisforelectronic]

Pretty good, but I think I enjoyed the first 2 extended versions better.

[Ryanm]

Having a LotR: Extended Edition Marathon Saturday and can't wait to see the two towers and rotk EE. I've had the first one forever and watched it to death, and for some reason never had the money to buy the two towers, but got both two towers and rotk extended editions for X-mas so looking forward to this saturday. 9+ hr marathon is going to be insane on my 7.1 system. I can't wait to hear the 2 new ones in DTS ES.

[Woochifer]

Got through my first viewing of the ROTK:EE disc a few days ago. As a movie, most of the extended scenes added a lot of depth to an already great flick. A few of them were best left on the editing room floor, but overall the extended version has more consistent pacing and seems to flow better than the theatrical version.

In listening, it seems on first impression that the DTS ES soundtrack has a more convincing envelopment effect. The overall imaging seems more cohesive than before. I haven't done any comparisons with the DD EX soundtrack that comes with the extended version, but from what I've read it too is very well done. I haven't noticed any huge differences in the video, but I have not really been critically viewing the image quality.

The biggest improvement in both the video and audio quality between the original DVD release and the extended version was definitely with FOTR. But, I think that in large part stems from the mediocre quality of the original FOTR DVD. The video quality was decent but had noticeable defects in certain scenes, and the audio on FOTR was pretty bad with the levels set high enough to distort during a lot of scenesand the bass way overshot in general. The extended version of FOTR fixed those issues and was a pretty good DVD overall.

For both TTT and ROTK, the theatrical version DVDs were well done in general, and the extended versions improved upon them.