My copy finally showed up today and I plan to watch all 3 films Thursday/Friday/Saturday. I’m not encouraged by many of the screenshots as far as resolution and detail go. Seems like a mixed bag.

I became concerned before I saw any of the screenshots when I watched the promo with Jackson and he said (paraphrasing) that this gave them the opportunity to make all 6 films look consistent; I took this to mean he wanted the LOTR trilogy to look like the Hobbit trilogy, and I’m afraid that’s what we got…lovely film scrubbed in an attempt to make it look digital.

Also, I don’t understand why I’m still seeing these small mastering displays in editing bays that mask the effects of DNR. At the very least, I hope they’re doing QA on larger calibrated consumer displays and projectors. Sony and LG OLEDs are close to reference quality after calibration, and sitting 6’ from a 65" screen makes overzealous DNR obvious.