Lord of the Rings extended editions NOT in 4K HDR

I am in the same position. But try this. On your Apple TV go to the TV app, goto Movies and scroll down to find the Middle Earth collection. I opened that and my extended versions for LOTR and Hobbit are all in 4K. Weird.

My guess is there is a glitch in rolling out the updates.

On my Mac, the extended versions are listed as being 4K. I’m in the US. On my Apple TV 4K box, they are not. i called Apple and they couldn’t seem to figure it out. The call dropped and they didn’t call back.

On a whim, I tried buying the extended edition trilogy for $25. Nothing additional showed up in my library of purchased movies but now each of the three films is 4K.

I suspect that the iTunes team somehow forgot to mark the individual films as being upgraded and only upgraded the bundle.

I’m going to call back tomorrow and ask for a credit for the $25.

All have now been upgraded in the UK. It can take a few days for this to roll out to all movies in all regions.

It’s good to see all the appendices are still there. The upgrade is a great deal from apple. I don’t see anyone offering to upgrade my Blu-rays for free.

I’m in Mexico, and the iTunes Store here has upgraded my three movies (extended versions) to 4K Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, so I expect any time soon they will upgrade them in all stores worldwide.

Here’s what I have received from iTunes about AUE, after I told them it’s the only title that hasn’t upgraded automatically:

“the content provider actually decided to upgrade the movie, "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Extended Edition)” which is now available in the TV App. However, this version currently available in the TV App is not actually the same copy you previously purchased. The Film Studio has removed the copy you previously purchased for many reasons, which we do not have further information at hand.

If you wish to get the 4K version of this movie, you will have to purchase the new version that is currently available at the TV App.

Furthermore, if your purchases were pulled out from the store, you will no longer be able to download these on your purchase page regardless if a new version of the item is currently available in the store. This is why we always encourage customers to regularly back up their iTunes store purchases as soon as possible, and thereafter on a regular basis. If you lose your purchases, you can restore the items from your backups.”

This is, frankly, a bewildering response to me.

I had the same thing with RotK initially — when I searched the store, it took me to the purchase page but said I owned the title. At that point, it was saying I had access to the HD version.

If I signed out, the page would say 4K was available. When I signed back in, it switched to HD! So I couldn't have purchased it again even if I'd wanted to.

After a few days, it changed to 4K and I had access to that in my library, so that was fine. Difference with An Unexpected Journey is that the 4K title is listed separately to my HD version, and I am able to purchase it again if I want to (which I don't, as I don't see why I'd need to upgrade that one when all the others upgraded automatically).

I can't see this as being a WB plan to get at least *some* fresh money out of existing owners of the HD titles, as surely you'd do the same with a (presumably more popular) LotR title too?

Here in NL they've finally all upgraded my copies to 4K HDR, I checked an hour ago on my MacBook and they were still HD, checked just now and saw they got upgraded. It looks like they're busy with getting it sorted around the world now.

What I discovered was that Apple only upgrades your movies to 4K that you bought from them. I didn’t buy The Lord of the Rings trilogy from Apple. I bought DVDs and got an iTunes code with them. That’s why I had to pay again for the 4K versions.

I did buy The Hobbit movies from them so those were all upgraded to 4K for free. I just wish the three different people I spoke to at Apple thought to ask if I had bought the movies from Apple. That would have saved a lot of time.

Nope my bad they are there lol

FYI the Extended editions are in 4K in the VUDU app.

The extended editions are all in 4K Dolby Vision and Atmos here in Ireland. I can get all six for 30€

All 6 of my extended editions have now finally been upgraded to 4K. It took a while but they got there eventually 😀

The extended versions are available in 4k dolby vision/atmos in the uk

Also in DK here. As of today (just checked) all 3 Movies of the Hobbit and also all 3 LotR are now 4K Atmos.

Lucky mofo, I guess its just about being patient. They really are rolling these out very uneven, not even just on country by country basis, but user by user basis, considering all the people in here.