ROTS picture quality: better than any DVD I have ever seen
 

This is not as much an exclamation thread as much as an observation I have made. I have watched other DVDs on my HDTV, but none of them seem to come close to this one in terms of presenting HD quality picture. FWIW, TPM and the OT DVDs don't look as good by comparison. Is there any reason why this DVD looks so much better than the average one on this particular setting?

They were shot on film and transferred to a digital medium.

Episodes 2 and 3 were shot digitally. You can't lose quality when your movie is all 0's and 1's.

You also have to remember that the OT films are much, much older and were in very poor shape before Lowry started their work. The OT DVDs look absolutely incredible as far as I'm concerned, in terms of transfer quality, especially compared to what they used to look like. If they're not reference, they're damn close to it in my opinion.

As for TPM, I don't know what happened there. It has a grainy picture and some dirt on the print as well. Not to mention excessive edge-enhancement. They just goofed on that one.

For now please keep all discussion in the main thread... http://dvdtalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=431945