I just watched the DOS EE and it was a major improvement for me. I still have major gripes with the last 30 minutes or so, but so many of the EE scenes added the needed depth to a TE that felt sloppy and rushed.
(This post was edited by macfalk on Nov 4 2014, 11:48pm)
Missing the Houses of Healing and Eowyn and Faramir's story was a huge hole for me in the TE. I let out a huge delighted sigh of relief when I found them in the EE. It went a small way to allowing me to forgive them for the changes to Faramir's character in the films.
I saw it 10 or so times in the theater, and always found the first half a bit of a slog. But when the EE added just a few additional scenes, i suddenly found i was more invested in the characters, and saw the Emyn Muil sequences as more of an adventure, and not something to just get through. To me, the EE of TTT speeds along at a brisk pace, where the TE was kind of boring in parts.
That said, i have yet to see the DoS EE. But unless they took out a bunch of stuff from the last 30-40 minutes of that movie, no amount of extra Beorn, Mirkwood or Dol Guldur material is going to change my mind about that one. But i am looking forward to the added stuff in the first half. We shall see-- i'm gonna pick it up this week-end.