rockin said:
The HDTV rips were pretty good at the time. I remember when the BD came out a few people people were disappointed with it, and thought it was a downgrade from the HDTV rips.
haha, those were the good old days. Indeed, I was one of the people on avsforum and blu-ray.com kicking up a stink about that. Compared to the hdtv transport stream of fotr extended edition I had (and still have), the massively DNRed theatrical blu-ray release was inferior in every respect. I'm sure some of my screencap comparisons are still there on both forums.
I certainly kicked up a fuss as well about the green tint on the fellowship of the ring extended edition blu-ray, posting lots of comparisons. Here's a youtube video even crediting me in the details as being the first person to point out the green tint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwcm-73kZE8
It was the studios continuously messing up fellowship of the ring that got me started on regrading films in the first place.
Unfortunately the framing between this hdtv version (which i'm pretty sure has the same framing as the theatrical blu-ray and extended edition dvd) and the extended edition blu-ray is pretty different. There is more image on the top and right on the extended edition transfer and the left side has been cropped a bit. I don't know if that will cause problems with the colour compare program. That said, I do believe that in many instances the fotr ee transfer (after having the green tint removed) looks better colourwise, the colour grading is more subdued and in line with the other two films. Looking at the colour grading of Rivendell on the hdtv transport stream is now pretty *wow* its so strong and overwhelming compared to the more subtle extended edition grading of Rivendell.
I believe Fellowship of the Ring was only partly regraded digitally for the theatrical release while the last two films were 100% graded digitally so maybe that's why they changed the colour grading so much for the fotr ee transfer, to make its colours more in line with the others that had been regraded digitally from the start.