A huge thanks to deadakaalive for the immense effort poured into this project. I’ve only had a quick glance at the 1GB-per-episode versions so far (this is going to take a little while—Rome wasn’t downloaded in a day), but what I’ve seen looks fantastic!

The episodes I’m downloading are encoded in 1080p H.264 rather than H.265—not that it makes much difference aside from slightly larger file sizes—and they look absolutely brilliant. The SD extended scenes from the DVDs have been upscaled remarkably well. They don’t have that eerie, AI-induced waxwork effect that makes everyone look like they belong in Madame Tussauds; instead, they’re a natural-looking, well-balanced improvement over the raw DVD footage. Even the transition from 16:9 to 4:3 isn’t as jarring as I expected.

It’s all been done with impressive level of care and good taste. Honestly, I can’t imagine a better version given the limitations of the source material. And it really does put Warner Bros. to shame for not including the extended editions in their HD/4K releases in the first place. If they never bother to do it officially, I can quite happily live with these excellent versions.

Bravo! 🎉