I just bought the trilogy on the iTunes Store tonight, happy to say it looks and plays 4K. In the Apple TV app, library, it shows up as 4K with Dolby under the description. Also appears in the 4K HDR folder/filter category :)
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Lord of the Rings trilogy releasing on 4K December 1
- Thread starter Col.IndianaLongnuts
- Start date
- Entertainment
I just bought the trilogy on the iTunes Store tonight, happy to say it looks and plays 4K. In the Apple TV app, library, it shows up as 4K with Dolby under the description. Also appears in the 4K HDR folder/filter category :)
I think that happens if your copy came from somewhere else. I think I redeemed a copy of Fellowship of the Ring on Vudu and linked up my Apple account to it in the past, so the movie appears too under Apple TV. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't auto upgrade movies from HD to 4k this way. They also don't give you a simple way to purchase the 4k movie if you wanted to, other than searching for the movie on itunes and gifting it to yourself.
I bought the extended edition trilogy in HD on iTunes months ago. When I play the films, they're playing the HD version, even if I go through iTunes and select the 4K version that it gives me access to.
FWIW, Hulu just added the HD theatrical versions of the trilogy. Cashing in, but I'm cool with watching them in HD.
Anybody here hate the case it comes in? I got one loose rotk disc in here that will not stick into its placement and a couple scratched discs. Think im going to have to ask for a replacement
Also saw fellowship extended and bah gawd did it look good. The nature locations especially have so much clarity
Also saw fellowship extended and bah gawd did it look good. The nature locations especially have so much clarity
Still no word from Best Buy and they won't let me cancel my order. Did they print like 15 sets of these discs? What the hell.
I was on the same boat as you until yesterday when they up and shipped mine. Not being able to cancel is a good thing in this situation. Don't lose hope!
ah, that's probably it then. It's annoying I can't just upgrade them easily without jumping through hoops
Not sure if anyone has posted this yet, but Peter Jackson managed to take all 6 movies of LOTR & The Hobbit & remastered them to make them look like they were shot at the same time.
Link.
These. If I'm going to spend between $80 to $100 between a Trilogy of The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings, I'd definitely pick LOTR.
Link.
These. If I'm going to spend between $80 to $100 between a Trilogy of The Hobbit & The Lord of the Rings, I'd definitely pick LOTR.
Finished up the Extended version of the trilogy and it looked amazing. The level of detail was phenomenal. The only nitpick is I swear certain scenes were desaturated compared to previous versions. Especially in Fellowship, skin tones tend towards grey for some reason. The clarity and detail make up for it though.
So, are these actually good? i didnt follow the thread but i know about older shitty BR releases of LOTR and i want to buy these.
Yes very good. Not perfect but still very good. The new Atmos tracks and new HDR colour grade is a nice step up over the older blu-ray's.
That'd why I splurged extra for the steelbook, as pricey as it was.
The vanilla set was looking flimsy based off unboxing videos
This is the best these movies will ever look.
Unless they go back and rerender cgi at 4k with upgraded assets, there is not much else they can do to them.
Was anyone else wholly unimpressed by how these look? I've watched the 1080p BR's every year since they've been released, and while I was annoyed with the tint choices, I thought they looked great. Finally got around to watching FOTR last night and I dunno, I just expected more. I'm glad the tint issues were resolved, but the picture didn't pop for me. The color seemed muted across the board, despite HDR, and the picture quality itself seemed incredibly lacking, especially on the landscape shots. Skintones seemed extremely blown out too, almost way too bright.
This could very much be a case of hype getting the better of me, but I'm so confused why these seem universally praised. Maybe I got so used to the extreme colors of the original BR releases that I'm reacting poorly to how the film should actually look? Middle Earth, in my head is supposed to be vibrant to a certain extent. The Hobbit movies take that to an awful extreme, but I feel like there has to be some sort of middle ground between the CG-fake colors of those movies vs the incredible gray and muted tones of this release.
This could very much be a case of hype getting the better of me, but I'm so confused why these seem universally praised. Maybe I got so used to the extreme colors of the original BR releases that I'm reacting poorly to how the film should actually look? Middle Earth, in my head is supposed to be vibrant to a certain extent. The Hobbit movies take that to an awful extreme, but I feel like there has to be some sort of middle ground between the CG-fake colors of those movies vs the incredible gray and muted tones of this release.
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I can't say I feel the same way. Watching fellowship without the green tint, with Dolby vision hdr, Atmos, and a crisp 4k transfer was awesome. I've heard that 4k is basically the top end for 35mm so I wouldn't expect these movies to ever look better than this.
the colors were not muted at all at least on my TV. They were very vibrant.
So if I'm understanding correctly, they plan to release these new 4K remasters as separate regular Blu-ray releases sometime next year, correct?
Spoken as someone who has yet to own a 4K player, but would like to re-watch with the added benefits of the new remaster -- even if it means a dramatic cut in bitrate.
Spoken as someone who has yet to own a 4K player, but would like to re-watch with the added benefits of the new remaster -- even if it means a dramatic cut in bitrate.
That's correct yes, the Blu-ray boxset is expected in December 2021 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of FOTR's cinema release.
Same here and I had no intention of buying this version but this thread got me hyped.
You're not the only one. The BluRay forums are up in arms over the use of DNR and general waxiness of these transfers. The consensus is that yes, HDR and colors are good but there is a lot of grain management and uneven shots that are a bit too processed looking.
I personally haven't seen them but I read their forums often to see if a disc is worth picking up and not a T2 situation so yeah. Something is not 100% as it should be with these.
But personally I bet I would be fine with them. The reviews are actually good so idk.
Thanks for the confirmation! But man, a whole year out from now? Well, at that point, I might pick up a PS5 and just go for the 4K releases after all.
Not at the moment, no, but I'm in the market. That's why I figured the upcoming Blu-Ray releases would be decent alternatives for the time being. I know I wouldn't be reaping the benefits of 4K, but dammit, I just wanna watch a green-tint free HD version of Fellowship!
Is iTunes the only place to get the films digitally right now?
I'm only halfway through the films, but so far I've seen exactly one instance of over-use of DNR, to the point where it was actually noticeable. So far, I would say those complaints are blown badly out of proportion, unless the latter half of the films is somehow drastically different from the front half in that regard.
Maybe they'll do something for the 30th anniversary of the trilogy, or who knows The Lord of the Rings might be readapted for the live screen again.
i'm curious if there is an issue with the 4k itunes upgrade based on the date purchased. The reason I say this is because the extended edition's HD bundle has a Cheap Charts price charting start date of November 12, 2020. Even though the individual movies within that bundle will have a 2019 release date, and iTunes own description has a 2019 release date for the extended bundle.
That said, if you click on the individual movie's description within that same bundle, they all say 4K, Dolby Vision etc!
Best guess is that a new trilogy "container" of 4k movies was released on November 2020 hence cheap charts picking up the meta-data on that release. Any purchases before that date probably based on the old 1080 HD transfer that never got a 4k upgrade behind the scenes.
I'm only seeing 4K for the original trilogy (not extended) on Google Play.
Hollywood will Hollywood, but remaking a classic within living memory (for most) of its release seems unlikely. Maybe an animated Hobbit movie/duology with more of a YA feel.
I don't think it'll be in the form of film, more likely Amazon will continue with their TV franchise. What better way to carry on from The War of the Last Alliance which is expected to be the culmination of their Second Age show, than to go straight into the events of The Lord of the Rings for another two or three seasons. That's more realistic than going back in time to the First Age and dealing with the War of the Jewels from the Quenta Silmarillion.
Perhaps. I think a series about the Arnor-Angmar wars might be a better follow up to the Second Age show, though.
It would 1) be unfamiliar material to most, 2) provide a lot of important background for the novels, and 3) bridge the Second Age show and the late Third Age movies/new series.
Amazon were said to be looking at the idea of a spin-off mini-series, so the Angmar War would be good material for that. It all depends on just how successful the Second Age TV show is. If it's a money maker, Amazon will do all in their power to secure more TV licence rights from the Tolkien Estate.
Thank you so much for answering, i guess i have my christmas gif right heare :)
I agree with these posts. I'm not sure if there was more they could have done with the materials, but there is no appreciable difference in resolution between the blu-rays and these (and yes, using caps-a-holic is absolutely a good way to check for resolution differences). What appears to be some amount of DNR is also a little disappointing. Don't get me wrong, this is no doubt going to look nice in HDR on a good display and, from what I've seen, I like what I did with the color grading. I just can't help but wish they didn't look like 2k upscales.I agree 100%. It really doesn't seem like they went back to the original negative. More like they went back to the same digital intermediate and fussed about with it.
Of course you can.
Very noticeably more detail? Not even remotely close? There's a slight improvement in fine detail, but it's slight. It looks more like the improvement you get from going back to a 2K DI rather than the 35mm source.
Just look at the text on the map.
There's no appreciable detail uptick on the text. In fact everything has a smeary, oily filter look that's reminiscent of being an upscale (of course this map could be a CGI element that was in fact upscaled). But there's also non-existent increase in film grain detail throughout the three movies. In fact they further DNR'd the already blotchy film grain detail in the "previous" master, you can easily tell looking at the sky.
As probably one of the few people on this forum who considers LOTR "just okay" (I absolutely recognize the incredible work that went into production and I objectively know it's a good movie... but I subjectively don't think it's a very interesting tale. I've tried reading the books too multiple times over the years and just don't care for Tolkien's writing style), I'll absolutely get a 4k set of both if only for the gorgeous landscape shots and neat battle scenes. At this point I treat the series as "Planet Earth", but with a bit of fantasy thrown in.
LOTR is definitely better than the Hobbit, but I thought the Hobbit was pretty fun, especially "part 1".
Huh, that's weird. I'll have to try that movie on my Series X.
I watched it twice on my Xbox One X and it worked fine.
I have issues with the recent Friday the 13th set on my Series X, and UHD movies especially were hit and miss on my One S. I'm contemplating on just dropping money on a dedicated UHD box, because my experience so far has been hit and miss with the ones built into Xbox.
LOL. Most studios already have a harder time making movies in pure 4K as it is due to astronomical production costs alone, as well as it's costs of 4K discs, which are some of the reasons why we're not seeing a ton of movies in 4K like we had with both DVD & Blu-Ray.
8K will be an even more of a niche market.
My standard UHD boxset was marked as out for delivery on launch day....a few hours later it said it would now be delivered on the 20th of December.
I was absolutely fuming with Amazon as you'd expect.
I was absolutely fuming with Amazon as you'd expect.
lol 8k is fools gold for a number of reasons. I seriously doubt production companies are going to be shooting, rendering and delivering 8k media for at minimum 10+ years if not longer.
Beyond that these old movies shot on 35mm aren't going to benefit at all.
we watched two towers last night and i sincerely hope so. There were several instances of cgi effects looking like crap. To me it would be nothing like what Lucs did to star wars which was replacing minatures with CGI. These were already cgi and if they have these original renders and assets, they could re-render them. I would think that the original assets were higher resolution than 1080p to start with. but i have nothing to base that on. I would pay good good money for this, as i think LOTR deserves it. Hell i'd donate compute time to make it happen!
The two towers though i would put at a 3 for PQ, because of the issues with the cgi. Some looked great like the nazgul and for the most part, gollum. I can only think of two instances were gollum genuinely looked out of place. Treebeard and the Ents look good except for when he's holding the hobbits and you can tell its compisited.
but again the number of close up facial shots shows that there is a sharpness bump. A number of scenes where two characters were face to face had excellent PQ. There were a couple of instances where faces had DNR effect as well, but these were when characters were further away from the lens. I also noticed they used a lot of shallow depth of field, so an actors nose would be out of focus but the eyes are in focus, or the actors face is diagonal to the camera so their right eye is out of focus but their left eye is in focus.
the thing though is the further something is away from the lens, whether shooting digital or film, the less detailed its going to be. However, when it comes to film, the further away it is the more grain is going to be ruining potential detail. I know this from shooting both 35mm film and medium format film. I personally scanned my own film as well so i have experience doing that. Film can absolutely look beautiful and detailed, but you have to absolutely nail everything from lighting, to focus, f-stop/aperture, shutter speed and then development -> scanning -> post processing. Digital has made everything so much easier, its frankly amazing how much detail digital sensors can capture now, compared to even the best film.
sorry but this is bullshit. There is a noticeable bump in resolution. Im watching 11ft from a 180" screen, i think i would notice.
Ohhh sure, I would be shocked if 8K film releases were a thing
This is the weirdest nitpick, but does anyone have problems with the colours on the discs themselves?
They're meant to be colour coded (green for Fellowship, Red for Two Towers, Blue for ROTK) but my second TT extended disc has the blue ROTK background. Nothing wrong with the content on the disc tho.
Just sending my OCD a bit crazy 😅
They're meant to be colour coded (green for Fellowship, Red for Two Towers, Blue for ROTK) but my second TT extended disc has the blue ROTK background. Nothing wrong with the content on the disc tho.
Just sending my OCD a bit crazy 😅
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Dedicated player or bust here. Usually faster, easier to use, and lower power consumption. Also not wearing out your game systems drive more.
That's so weird, just checked and mine are all the right colors, that would drive me nuts too.