my neighbor at work told me, these are the editions that split the movie in half, and you would have to head to your DVD player mid-way to flip the disk for second half of the movie. Along with this as 8.99 for EACH disk, I will just have to pass at this time.:thumbs_do
It's a little confusing.
The original Extended Editions of each film were four DVDs for each movie. The movie itself was split over the first two discs, and the 3rd and 4th discs were bonus features.
The reason that they had to break up the movie, is because with the extended editions there's an extra 20-30 minutes of fully produced footage that's edited back into the movie. They went the whole nine yards with the additions to - rerecording of soundtrack, full special effects, etc. They're not just deleted scenes, they're seemlessly integrated into the theatrical versions.
The result is that each of the movies turns out being 3.5 to 4 hours each, thus they would never fit on a single DVD.
If you enjoyed the films, then you will love the extended editions even more. Flipping the disc over or switching discs is really not a big deal, considering that after you sit for two hours through the first half of the movie, you're going to want to get up, use the bathroom, etc, anyway, so change the disc then.
I believe these releases don't have the full bonus material and the DTS soundtrack like the original release of the extended editions.
thanks!