***Official LOTR: The Two Towers DVD Discussion Thread*** -- All Posts Here; NO EXCEPTIONS (1 Viewer)

[Dan Brecher]

The picture quality is slightly improved over the theatrical version. Compression is cleaner, with less loss of fine detail. The picture still appears to lack the extreme detail of some other new releases (such as The Matrix Reloaded), which implies that slight filtering has been applied to reduce the need for higher bitrates.

Having done a number of in depth inspections on both versions now, I absolutely agree with your statement here, Simon. I can't say it came as anything of a surprise given both Fellowsip of the Ring DVD releases suffered from the same issue of filtering. I took the liberty of doing 720x480 uncompressed shots of the exact same frame from both releases. I can't post them here as they are too large and I don't have space to host them. I really I don't think I could bring myself to deem the extended any kind of "significant" imrpovement.

A shame about the filtering issue again since disc one only holds just under one hour and fifty minutes worth of film content, and disc two about two hours and ten minutes worth including the fan credits. It's probably safe to say the PAL extended Two Towers wont carry the filtering since neither PAL Fellowship DVD did.

Also, the aspect ratios differ slightly. The extended edition framing is opened up ever so slightly.

Dan

 

[oscar_merkx]

mine will arrive in a couple of days

 

[Jack_TN]

Is there only the 4 disc version of the extended edition? The listing at Bestbuy.com doesn't label it Platinum Edition and the title of the webpage says 2 pieces. I wondered if they just recycled the title from the earlier release and didn't noticed the error.

Jack

 

[RobertW]

a couple of questions:

dan, do you think the gollum statue and bonus disc make the gift set worth buying? cause i'm not really sure i want the statue, although if the disc and booklet are top notch, i'd have to go for them.

any confirmation about the lack of a moviecash ticket for ROTK? and there definitely is a rebate coupon? that would help to offset the gift set price.

in the scenes with treebeard, one of the things that bothered me in the theatrical cut were the scenes where they were shown in closeup moving against the background, and the blue screen effects were just a bit too obvious to me. have they done any work to make these scenes blend better?

 

[JayHM]

Dan,

How do you know that the PAL DVD is unfiltered, or for that matter, that the NTSC DVD is filtered.

Just curious. I was always under the impression that PAL DVDs are mastered from the same source material as the NTSC ones.

Jay

 

[Aaryn Chan]

What does filtering do? Btw, I noticed that FOTR wad a bit redish.

 

[Mikah Woodward]

Is there only the 4 disc version of the extended edition?

There are two versions of the extended edition. Well, three if you include the VHS.

Anyway, there's the 4 disc version going for about $25. Also, there's the "gift set" or whatever that incudes the 4 disc version, a gollum statue, and an extra DVD and booklet which I believe go into the making of the gollum statue. The gift set goes for around $60.

Pics:

4-disc
gift set

 

[Dan Brecher]

Just curious. I was always under the impression that PAL DVDs are mastered from the same source material as the NTSC ones.

This is where I think many make a lot of confusion in talking about transfers and what have you, since the transfer and mastering are generally two different things. The transfer will come from an HD source, and yes, I am sure both the PAL and NTSC releases stem from the same HD master, only one is downconverted for PAL, the other NTSC at which point we get into mastering which is when all sorts of tweaks and applications to the image can be added.

This is not to say some image applications are never applied to the HD source itself, but usually such things crop up during the mastering process. So, it's really in the mastering, and not the transfer that something like "edge enhancement" or whatever term one wishes to give that issues, comes into play...etc.

I really need to nudge Bjoern to update his website.

Dan

 

[Michael Qualen]

It IS possible to get Gollum out without destroying the case, but it takes time and patience ! I just got my set, and I think it took me about 15 minutes to scratch the h*** out of the "foam" around the Gollum figurine...but I got it out eventually, and my box is still intact