The dialogue is primarily driven from the center channel but there are a lot of occasions where you’ll hear dialogue carry over into the other channels such as rears, to set the atmosphere of a room or psychologically give you a bit of a treat. The dialogue never manages once to have any issues or be drowned out by any of the extremely intense action or music. These are perfect Dolby Atmos mixes by all means. The height channels make excellent use of sound effects and music and will totally leave your room filled, making you feel fully immersed in the listening experience. The mixes themselves are just so amazingly well-balanced between the front (left & right) channels, and the rear channels (2 or 4 depending on your setup), along with the extremely effective addition of the height channels (2 or 4 depending on setup). Continuing on with the technical bit, and keeping it a bit separate for the extended editions of those to not become overwhelming, since they all use 2 discs for each film. The first film, “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” in its extended edition on Disc 1 is using a BD-100 (100 gigabytes) disc, 75.72 gigabytes total, and 67.4 gigabytes for that first half of the extended edition itself of the first film. The extended edition on Disc 2 is using a BD-100 (100 gigabytes) disc, 83.21 gigabytes total, and 74.9 gigabytes for that second half of the extended edition of the first film.

Audio Format(s): English Dolby Atmos (with a Dolby TrueHD 7.1 core), Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 surround, DTS 5.1, Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo All and all, this trilogy earns itself an impressive 4.5 rating for video quality . Each of these films on 4K UHD Blu-ray Discs here offers up a nice improvement over those original Blu-ray releases of the films. Audio Commentary with “The Cast” features Elijah Wood ( “Frodo”), Sean Astin ( “Sam”), John Rhys-Davis ( “Gimli”, the voice of “Treebeard”), Billy Boyd ( “Pippin”), Dominic Monaghan ( “Merry”), Orlando Bloom ( “Legolas”), Christopher Lee ( “Saruman”), Sean Bean ( “Boromir”), Bernard Hill ( “Theoden”), Miranda Otto ( “Eowyn”), David Wenham ( “Faramir”), Brad Dourif ( “Wormtongue”), Karl Urban ( “Eomer”), John Noble ( “Denethor”), Craig Parker ( “Haldir”), and Andy Serkis ( “Gollum”).Available in 4K for the very first time, the arrival of the two Middle-earth trilogies in the UHD format will fill the gaps in the movie libraries of legions of film fans who still hanker after the physical medium for their collections. Editor’s Note: This review is now complete. A similar review of The Hobbit Trilogy in 4K Ultra HD is also now available here on The Digital Bits.]

This trilogy of films now on 4K UHD Blu-ray will leave you completely overwhelmed and extremely satisfied now in Dolby Atmos. I don’t care how amazing you thought the sound was before on Blu-ray or even during the theatrical showings, this is superior and just unlike anything you have experienced this film in. Fans are going to absolutely love this and likely receive complaints from landlords, neighbors, family members, police, and whatnot for it being louder than all hell. Sorry, but that’s what makes a “demo disc” that delivers absolute reference material from the very start until the very end credits, for each and every film and each version. This audio section will be covering all three of the films and both versions of each. I’ll mention some things specific to those but for the most part, this will be generalized to the whole trilogy itself. As of 2023, no streaming services offer The Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit films in 4K to stream. The Lord of the Rings is available to stream on HBO Max and Hulu. With one account you can get both subscriptions. You can stream all three The Lord of the Rings films and three prequel films to the story, aka the Hobbit trilogy. Unfortunately, at this time, you can only stream the movies at 1080p and to experience it in 4K you have to buy them digitally or buy the Blu-ray discs.Another audio moment is when the Fellowship attempts to take the Pass of Caradhras over the Misty Mountains but are ambushed by Saruman. The sounds of lightning, winds, and snow avalanches provide a good Atmos experience, especially in the subwoofer range. We could all use a trip to the Shire right about now. Those rolling green hills with blooming flowers and pastoral farms would be a welcome respite. While going to Middle-earth may not be possible, you can now put yourself into the world of The Lord of the Rings like never before. That’s because, last year, Warner Bros. released the beloved trilogy on 4K UHD Blu-ray. In terms of audio quality, “The Lord of the Rings: The Motion Picture Trilogy” comes with some of the most impressive Dolby Atmos object-based surround sound mixes that I have ever heard. Each one of these three films, in either their theatrical or extended version, proves to be pure “demo material” from start to finish. To say these mixes can get intense would be a bit of an understatement. Each film will leave you feeling so much more immersed in the motion picture experience now thanks to the benefits of height channel speakers. The 6.1 surround sound mixes found on the previous Blu-ray releases of these films were pretty impressive themselves but now with Dolby Atmos, these films are able to be presented to you in an audio presentation that feels nothing short of otherworldly. Each one of these mixes earns a perfect 5 rating for audio quality, with enough “oomph” to leave this reviewer extremely pleased.