We could all use a trip to the Shire right about now. Those rolling green hills with blooming flowers and pastoral farms would be a welcome respite. While going to Middle-earth may not be possible, you can now put yourself into the world of The Lord of the Rings like never before. That’s because, last year, Warner Bros. released the beloved trilogy on 4K UHD Blu-ray. Hairy Hobbit feet! We always knew the Hobbits had hairy feet, but perhaps we forgot how hairy they were. Along comes this new 4k upgrade and although there are not many closeups of their feet you can almost count the Hobbity hairs when pausing the video. Watching The Lord of the Rings Trilogy in 4k with HDR is really like watching the film for the first time. Even though you may already have every scene memorized, the visual improvements are like candy for your eyes. Dim your lights, crank up the volume, and make some microwave popcorn for this binge-worthy home theater experience. Warner’s new 4K Ultra HD release includes both the Theatrical Cuts and Extended Editions of each film, the former contained on a single UHD disc for each film while the latter are split over two UHD discs each. So let’s take a look at the A/V quality of each remastered film one by one…

Nearly twenty years later, The Fellowship of the Ring arrives on 4K Ultra HD, once more, just in time with its fantastical escapism and a moment of respite from the real world. " On the audio side of things, Warner’s new 4K UHD release also includes a brand new English Dolby Atmos mix (that’s 7.1 Dolby TrueHD compatible). And the most important thing you need to know is that, is that it’s—hands down—a reference quality cinema surround sound experience. For one thing, the soundstage is absolutely huge, and not just across the front—this is a truly complete and hemispheric sonic environment. Every channel is active at once, including the overheads, uniformly engaged in creating a sense of whatever space is being depicted on screen at that moment. Dialogue is crystal clear and naturally-positioned. Panning is so smooth as to seem effortless. And the dynamics! There are moments so soft and subtle they’ll take your breath away with tiny little environmental sound effects filtering in around you—burbling water, bird calls, insects at night. And then, in the middle of the action, the full sturm und drang of battle assaults you from all sides, as if to shake the very foundation of your house. Swords scrape, clash, and ring sharply, their sounds lingering in the air. The orc drums in the depths of Moria, the roar of the Balrog, Boromir’s horn of Gondor—you can practically feel the low end in your chest. One of the scenes that surprised me most with this mix was Gandalf and Saruman’s first confrontation in Orthanc—just listen to the surround panning and bass as Gandalf is being thrown around the room! It’s marvelous. And topping it all off, Howard Shore’s score has simply never sounded better, presented here in lossless fidelity. Additional audio options on the 4K EXTENDED EDITION discs include French 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio and German, Italian, and Castilian Spanish in 6.1 DTS-HD MA, with optional subtitles in English for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, French, German for the Hearing Impaired, Italian for the Deaf, Castilian Spanish, Dutch, Simplified Chinese, Cantonese, Korean, Latin Spanish, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, and Thai. Additional audio options on the 4K THEATRICAL CUT disc include French 5.1 DTS-HD MA, German and Spanish 5.1 Dolby Digital, Italian 6.1 DTS-HD MA, and Spanish 2.0 Dolby Digital, with optional subtitles in English for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, French, German for the Hearing Impaired, Italian for the Deaf, Dutch, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Latin Spanish, Czech, Danish, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian, Polish, Swedish, and Thai. Audio Commentary with “The Design Team” features Richard Taylor (Weta Workshop creative supervisor), Tania Roger (Weta Workshop manager), Grant Major (production designer), Alan Lee (conceptual designer, set decorator), John Howe (conceptual designer), Dan Hennah (supervising art director, set decorator), and Chris Hennah (art department manager). As of 2023, no streaming services offer The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit films in 4K to stream. The Lord of the Rings is available to stream on HBO Max and Hulu. With one account you can get both subscriptions. You can stream all three The Lord of the Rings films and three prequel films to the story, aka the Hobbit trilogy. Unfortunately, at this time, you can only stream the movies at 1080p and to experience it in 4K you have to buy them digitally or buy the Blu-ray discs.

A Digital Copy of each film of the three films in both the theatrical and extended versions are included, via a physical paper insert with a redemption code, which is compatible with Movies Anywhere. That’s going to work across a lot of services like AppleTV (iTunes), Google Play, Vudu, and Fandango Now. You’ll get the film in 4K on all of those services, to my knowledge. I personally opted for the AppleTV (iTunes) versions. In terms of video quality, this 4K UHD Blu-ray debut of the films is impressive and is certainly the best that these films have ever looked at, especially in terms of color in comparison to the previous Blu-ray releases. There’s a nice amount of detail here now in 4K resolution with HDR (high dynamic range), especially in facial close-ups, that you were never able to see in the 1080p HD presentation. However, this visual presentation is not entirely perfect, as it does have a few minor problems. Namely, the use of DNR (digital noise reduction) seems to have smoothed things over a tad bit. In fact, to be from a Super 35 film source and from a new 4K remaster you’d think you would be able to see skin pores in facial close-ups but they’re almost softened. However, you oddly enough can make out tiny little hairs or even tears when a character weeps. These are things that honestly most consumers will not even notice or complain about, but then again, that’s my job to point these things out. Finally, regarding video quality, there also seems to be a tiny bit of EE (edge enhancement) that was used on this new 4K master. That all being said, it is still an impressive enough upgrade here in terms of the 4K visual presentation to be somewhat pleased even if you’re not a fan of DNR or EE filters being applied. But here’s the thing: I’ve been reviewing Blu-ray and DVD quality professionally now for twenty-three years on The Digital Bits, and 4K Ultra HD quality for the last four of those years. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen a 4K remaster that made quite this much of a difference over a previous Blu-ray release before.

Due to the extensive nature of the Trilogy we’ll be updating this review with further moments from the two sequels.) The Movie The Return of the King: Behind the Scenes” (1:51:54 – SD) is shot like a home movie but it also includes interviews with the entire cast and crew that worked on the film. Furthermore, The Lord of the Rings Trilogy featuring remastered Blu-ray discs of the theatrical and extended versions of the 3 films will also be released in the fourth quarter 2021, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. If there’s anything humans demand in this life, it’s that. Greater clarity. Just speak clearly, you scream—at politicians, at therapists, at spouses. Also at me, for writing such a muddy first paragraph. God, it really is a mess. Sinful, even, so wordy and wasteful. If clarity, like its cousin cleanliness, is indeed next to godliness—and it is; the word, in the original Middle English, meant “glory, divine splendor”—then to be unclear is to be unethical. Or un-optical, as it were, since optics are the new ethics, at least in corporate America, where all they do is seek clarity on this, visibility into that. I mean, could I be any more clear? The Two Towers: Behind the Scenes” (1:46:17 – SD) is shot like a home movie but it also includes interviews with the entire cast and crew that worked on the film.Bilbo’s Birthday Party. Gandalf’s fireworks have never looked so detailed as they do in 4k with HDR. This is a low-light night scene that benefits from the expanded color range, so much you can almost count the candles on Bilbo’s 111th birthday cake – a slice of this particular scene that you might not have noticed before. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring 4k Digital Still Video (Color Range) Exact Runtime(s): 2:58:25, 2:59:25, 3:21:01 (theatrical) 1:45:43, 2:02:34, 1:46:39, 2:08:52, 2:07:40, 2:15:37 (extended) Gandalf’s Fall Into Darkness. The color range improvement is clearly evident when Gandalf battles the Balrog and the two fall into darkness. Not only is the imagery deep with color, it’s also sharp, making almost every frame a work of art. The visual effects of Balrog hold up wonderfully even after 20 years.

One thing that I can assure you of here is that you will feel like you’re being completely encompassed by the sound mixes for the three films themselves on a level that has never been possible. It’s something out of this world. I love the pans from the right to left or left to right you’ll hear across the front and/or rear channels during some action scenes. I also love the pans from front to rear you’ll hear such as during the first film when a fireworks display involving a dragon feels to be coming right at you and those in said scene. It’s effective stuff like that and then the height channels add this really unique sound of it towering above that one cannot help but truly admire about this trilogy of films in the Dolby Atmos sound format. The amount of bass here, especially low-end bass, that you’ll feel via the subwoofer is downright tremendous. To say these mixes can get intense would become an understatement as I’m learning when writing this. This audio section will be covering all three of the films and both versions of each. I’ll mention some things specific to those but for the most part, this will be generalized to the whole trilogy itself.You know, visual effects technology has advanced a lot in twenty years and when they become, you know, ultra crisp and sharp through the 4K process we realized that some of the shots were not holding up too well.” Available in both standard and, from selected retailers, Steelbook sets, both trilogies will feature the theatrical and extended versions of the six films in 4K resolution with High Dynamic Range ( HDR) in the form of Dolby Vision which uses dynamic metadata to automatically optimise the picture for every scene, frame by frame, expanding the colour palette and contrast range. Perhaps there also may have been a light use of some edge enhancement (EE) to sharpen things up here. Things can feel a tad bit different in terms of clarity in some scenes more than others, feeling sharper than others that feel softer. The CG visual effects, the makeup, costumes, miniatures, in-camera effects and all look impressive here and rarely show off many flaws. Still, one should keep in mind that these films were made almost 20 years ago and that CG effects and blue screen techniques have greatly improved since then in newer films. That said, they manage to definitely hold up visually in 4K and at times can feel impressive. However, this trilogy feels like it could have looked just slightly better somehow if they perhaps hadn’t applied so much DNR and left the original film grain and detail as sharp as it should have been. I just believe it could have looked a great deal better, but it’s almost enough to somewhat do these incredible motion pictures the visual justice they deserve. I still think that the average consumer will be pretty much happy with the 4K presentation, as I had mentioned, but some will find things that weren’t done correctly and prevent it from looking perfect.

It’s not a story of heroes or superheroes,” he says. “It’s a story of regular people who set out to save their world.” The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” was nominated for a total of thirteen Academy Awards (Oscars). It ended up winning a total of four Oscars in the categories of “Best Cinematography,”“Best Makeup,”“Best Music, Original Score,” and “Best Effects, Visual Effects.” Critics were very kind to the first film and it carries a “Certified Fresh” rating over at Rotten Tomatoes. Continuing on with the technical bit, and keeping it a bit separate for the extended editions of those to not become overwhelming, since they all use 2 discs for each film. The first film, “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” in its extended edition on Disc 1 is using a BD-100 (100 gigabytes) disc, 75.72 gigabytes total, and 67.4 gigabytes for that first half of the extended edition itself of the first film. The extended edition on Disc 2 is using a BD-100 (100 gigabytes) disc, 83.21 gigabytes total, and 74.9 gigabytes for that second half of the extended edition of the first film. Let me get really, really, really technical, for a bit longer than usual here as I’ll be spanning across 9 discs, in regards to the 4K UHD Blu-ray Discs themselves here for this set. The first film, “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” in its theatrical cut is using a BD-100 (100 gigabytes) disc, 85.41 gigabytes total and 84.0 gigabytes for that theatrical cut itself. The second film, “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers” in its theatrical cut is using a BD-100 (100 gigabytes) disc, 87.35 gigabytes total and 86.0 gigabytes for that theatrical cut itself. The third film, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King” in its theatrical cut is using a BD-100 (100 gigabytes) disc, 89.46 gigabytes total and 88.1 gigabytes for that theatrical cut itself.But please, before you watch LOTR in 4k or 4k with HDR, switch to movie or film mode on your Ultra HD TV. Why? There is no need for artificial enhancements with these discs. Perhaps equally as important, remove the smooth motion “soap opera” effect also in your TV’s settings. This is film, not “Days of Our Lives.” Scores