I've got the Collector's Set with the book ends and the whole nine yards. Personally I think it's complete hogwash to jam this story into 3 hours and no more. The Extended version IS the REAL movie as far as I'm concered. I would've loved to see the 4 hour original edit!
The Extended version is undoubtedly a better film overall.
In FOTR I could practically FEEL where they made the edits. Leaving Rivendell was so choppy that I knew there must've been more stuff there, and there is!
Why the studio feels you need to rush a 1000 page book, the most popular book around, into a 3 hour package is beyond me. Hell, if you wanna condense a long, sorta boring tome into a movie why not take a stab at filming The Silmarillion? That would rock!
LOTR is a scene-by-scene narrative and thus less suited to filmmaker meddling whereas The Silmarillion is more of a historical work, which leaves plenty of room for creating invented scenes. Such as, oh I dunno...like feigned "let's-make-the-audience-think-the-character-is-dead-but-they're-really-not" scenes that nobody with half a brain would believe.