Mini-Review: The Lord of the Rings Trilogy: Limited Edition
Directed By: Peter Jackson
Studio: New Line
Year: 2006
Aspect Ratio: 2.40:1 (Anamorphic)
Rating: PG-13
Audio: 5.1 Dolby Digital EX (English), 2.0 Dolby Digital (English)
MSRP: $86.94
Street Date: 29 August, 2006
Review Date: 7 August, 2006
(Ratings are out of five stars)
Summary
Seeing as the newest in a the large family of Lord of the Rings DVDs is such a hot-button issue, I wanted to get this mini-review out there as soon as possible. I’ll keep it brief for now, and post more detailed reviews of each film in the coming weeks. On to the DVDs…
Continuing the tradition of opening directly to the menu, the new LOTR releases open directly to a selection screen where the viewer can choose between the theatrical or extended cuts of the film. The DVDs are in fact 2-sided DVD-18s discs to clear up any confusion. Once the cut is selected, the DVD goes into the normal menu. As previously reported, the DTS track is the main omission with Dolby Digital 5.1 EX as the only Audio selection.
The disc breaks all appear to be at the same location (as the disc break in the EE release and the layer change in the original 2-disc release). When you flip the disc, you’re prompted to choose a version and then prompted to either continue watching or change the screen and sound options.
Film Rating:
Video
Like the previous releases of the Lord of the Rings, the “new” transfers are excellent. I don’t quite know how new they actually are, because they look very much the same as the previous transfers. One can argue the detail between the original 2-disc releases and the EE’s, but in my opinion, the improvement was in bit-rate alone. Being DVD-18s, these discs could technically carry the same data as found in the EE releases, and the transfers definitely looks as detailed and crisp. I noticed a slight bit of grain in a few shots (one that comes to mind is Legolas’s face during the ‘Breaking of the Fellowship’ scene at the end of the film), so I popped in my EE and saw the same grain. The transfer looks pretty identical to me. I’ll have some comparison caps up in the full review.
Video Rating:
Audio
Like the video, the audio sounded comparable to the DD tracks from the EE and original 2-disc release. I didn’t notice any large differences, but I wasn’t doing critical A-B comparisons. I’ll have more detailed notes in the full reviews.
Audio Rating:
Extras
The biggest selling point of the new releases is the “never-before-seen” documentaries. Who would have thought that after countless hours of LOTR behind-the-scenes, you’d be plunking down 60 bucks for more? The documentary appears on the second (single sided) disc in each set. The DVD opens directly up to the menu, which gives you the option to play the featurette, select subtitles, or view DVD-ROM features. I only watched the documentary on the Fellowship disc, and it clocked in at 1:24:49. The major difference between this style of doc and what we’ve already seen is that the new stuff is much more guerilla style. The footage is raw and un-narrated. On one hand, it’s nice to see this style of production diary, but on the other we don’t get any wonderful interviews spliced between the footage. That being said, we’ve probably seen enough conventional interviews about Lord of the Rings to kill us, so this is a nice change of pace. I’ll break down the content of each doc more in my full reviews.
Extras Rating:
In Closing…
Is it worth the upgrade? At this point, I’m still not sure. The picture quality appears to be identical, but there aren’t too many DVD-18 fans out there. Combined with the loss of all the commentaries and the DTS track, the only real reason to pick this up is for the documentary (er, um…fanboy complete-ism
). At face value, the documentaries probably won’t get more than one viewing out of me, but my final opinion may change once I watch all of them. Stay tuned…
Overall Rating: ???
Matt Stone
7 August, 2006
