There's an interesting poll being run over at the IGN Blu-ray site....
It is asking people "what extra feature on the LOTR BD set would you most be interested in"...the choices are things like "a preview of The Hobbit", "extended gag reel", "cast & crew reunion interviews", "Guillermo Del Toro commentary", "PiP interactive featurettes" etc.....however, the one choice that is WAY out ahead in the voting (getting over 2/3rd's of the votes, 67.1%), is "both the theatrical and extended cuts of the films"....
I know they want to hold off on the extended cuts until later, when Jackson can do his mondo-edition around the release of The Hobbit in a couple years....but I'd imagine this theatricals only plan is going to cost them quite a bit in sales now....
I'd grab this set in a heartbeat even if it did not have one bonus feature if it just included the extended cuts in 1080p with lossless audio....and I'd happily buy them again in a couple years for the mega set with all the special features and then some....see Warner, I'm telling you right now I'd double dip! As it stands, I'll keep my SD sets now and pass on this theatrical only box....

It seems to me that it won't cost them anything. Many people will buy these Blus. The ones who will only buy the extended editions will still buy them--just a little later. And some people will buy both...So, as unfortunate as it is, I don't see how they lose anything by double-dipping. The only thing I could see is that maybe the sales numbers aren't as giant as they're hoping for for this edition...But, if they release around XMas, I don't even think this will be an issue.

Yeah, but that's just the IGN website. It's not like it's from a LOTR website or anything, from the man himself.

See, people have already done the dip and double dip and some have even done the triple dip game on these LOTR DVD releases. For DVD, that was kind of acceptable. However, we're in the Blu-ray format now, and a lot of people already own these films in both theatrical and EE form. To start the same dipping program, which I'm sure will do the TE, the EE, and then eventually both together via seemless branching, it's absolutely absurd that they wont' release the EE's now. I know money is the bottom line, but how many sales are they going to miss out on because the EE's aren't out yet?

I know that this isn't a universal thought between LOTR fans, but I simply cannot go back to the TE's. The EE's in my opinion offer so much more, that yes, I would rather watch the EE's for a couple of more years instead of seeing the TE's in HD now. *sighs*

Here's my bottom line though: It's fine they release the TE's first. But to wait until what, 2011 for the EE's? Why? Why the hell should we have to wait two years for that? Hopefully they only take a year and release these things in the holiday season of 2010...

We won't. The "information" that the EEs are coming out at the same time as The Hobbit is based on a collective misunderstanding of what was originally said. All we know is that the EEs will be released sometime between the release of the TEs and The Hobbit.

But that's not true either. Unless I'm missing something, people saw the words 'closer to the release of The Hobbit' or something like that, and said to themselves 'oh that means it won't be THAT close to the release of The Hobbit', like they were fooling themselves to make themselves feel better. I may be missing a piece of information here, but if that's what makes people think we won't be waiting until at LEAST the late fall or holiday season of 2010, they're just kidding themselves. I hope I'm wrong though.

What's "true" is that no one really knows.

Precisely. If this does phenomenal, we may see them bump up the EEs.

There is alos much to be said for tying in with a cross-promotional campaign like the release of a new film.

It is too early to tell.

That's why I think they'll use the EE's to release the first early trailers for The Hobbit. They'll have to wait until they've started filming and have some footage in the can, but that should be sometime in 2010.

I won't buy the blus until it contains everything from the EE releases. Out of principal more than anything. I haven't even seen most of the supplemental material on the EE's but I want it anyway.

It just showed up in my quick picks for an additional 5% off. I think I'll order it to lock that discount in. If the set drops in the future, the 5% off will stack on top of the new price.

I was checking out the BD-Live content on Gran Torino and there is a six minute downloadable HD trailer for LOTR on there. The date at the end just says "Coming Soon"

I haven't watched a single extra in the Extended Editions either, but it's a matter of principle.

FOTR is my favorite movie ever. I watched all of the special features on all of the EEs. Actually I might not have gotten through all of ROTK but I know I watched the features on FOTR and TTT.

Same here, I don't think that I've watched a single extra on any of the LOTR releases, yet.

I hate how there are different special features exclusive to the theatrical releases, the EEs, and the combo releases; so you have to own at least 9 sets to have everything. I'm sure the bastards will put exclusive stuff on the multiple Blu releases to.

^ and yet none of them have actual have extra 'deleted scenes' - something I know does exist and in the commentaries have been stated as being released in another yet to be released future edition [uh, bluray extended edition special editions??]

come to think of it, when will Warner/New Line release the bluray specs and supplements (if any) for the Trilogy release?

I've been working on ripping the special features from the TEs and encoding them to xvid and putting them on my media server for watching via Tivo/Xbox streaming. That way I don't need them on the shelf any more.

Good God, check out the customer reviews and comments on Amazon for this set:

http://www.amazon.com/Lord-Rings-Pic...dp/B000X9FLKM/

Exactly. I get a sense that some exec is using the old "multiple bites at the same apple" quote that we've heard before.

11/3/09 is the official date for this finally.

Don't know about specs, but until it disappeared from the site, WBShop.com had listed essentially all of the extras from the original 2-disc theatrical DVDs minus the extended edition, next movie, and video game previews.

Dang. I thought there was some news on the EEs. Back to sleep.

I hope you like hibernating for a couple years....you and me will both be like Rip Van Winkle while we wait for 2011 (and the EE set).....

There must have been some sort of organized effort there, which makes it all the more pathetic.

Ill never watch the theatricals again. It would feel like Im missing something.

Ill pass on these and just stick to DTS sound and upconverted DVD for now.