Bill Hunt from digitalbits.com said it best 'It's my opinion that The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, in this long form, is an achievement unmatched in the history of cinema.'
Now the Extended Editions have come to Blu-Ray and can now be viewed in stunning 1080p video and 6.1 DTS-HD MA audio. Much has been said about the improvements made to the first film. I believe the color timing is an improvement. It appears that it now matches the look of the other three movies. You really notice in the Bridge of Khazad-dum scene. In the DVD release of the Extended Editions it looked different from the first movie and the beginning of the second movie. That has been remedied with this release.
Also there has been some complaints about the number of discs offered in this release. Specifically that with the memory size of a Blu-Ray disc these films should fit on one disc. I believe that the fact that they are still split over 2 discs is only a plus. This allows the best video and audio to be shown. The down-side is that there are no 5-disc Blu-Ray players. There are only 400-disc varieties that are very pricey.
The DVD extras were unfortunately not filmed in HD and therefore are again released on DVD with this Blu-Ray release. This release gives you all the supplemental materials from the previous 2 DVD releases. With that being said, this is the most complete release of these movies and I feel confident that I won't have to buy another release later down the road. This is the best you are going to get with the Lord of the Rings. Buy it now!
What's great about it: Picture and sound the best it is going to get!
What's not so great: No 5-Disc players to play it on. Oh well.