Give Amazon credit for great data on Blu-ray Lord of the Rings

I’ve been among the many movie fans disappointed by the studios’ greedy Blu-ray releases. Last year’s issue of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (non-extended editions) was probably an all-time low. New Line Cinema paid the price, with so many one-star reviews on Amazon that the discs were eventually consigned to the store’s virtual discount bin for half off.

Now, with the release of the extended edition LOTR trilogy on Blu-ray in a “limited edition,” Amazon, at least, seems to be more concerned with customer satisifaction.

The first thing you notice on the pre-order page is a warning alerting you that a non-limited edition version, presumably with just the longer movies and not the days’ worth of extras will also be released soon (presumabaly at a lower price). But scroll down futher and there is a really cool and useful chart of all LOTR DVD and Blu-ray releases.

Now you can see pretty clearly which movies and extras that are on the upcoming discs you already own from buying previous sets. That may hurt sales of the “limited edition” some — do you really need to have a copy of “Cameron Duncan: The Inspiration for Into the West” in high definition if you’ve already got it on the Platinum series DVD set? Maybe not. But it is a really pro-customer move by Amazon for which they should be applauded.