- Aspect Ratio: 1:33:1
- Video Codec: VC-1
- Resolution: 1080p/24 (23.976Hz)
- Audio Codec: English 1.0, Spanish 1.0
- Subtitles: English SDH, French, Spanish
- Region: ABC (Region-Free)
- Rating: Not Rated
- Run Time: 24 Mins
- Discs: 1 (1 x Blu-ray)
- Studio: Warner Home Video
- Blu-ray Release Date: October 4th, 2011
- List Price: $24.99
[amazon-product]B005BQQD9A[/amazon-product]
BestBuy.com:
Purchase ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:2.5/5]
The Film
[Rating:2/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:2/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0.5/5]
Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures
(Screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG thus are meant as a general representation of the content and do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)
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The Film
[Rating:2/5]
‘Twas the Night Before Christmas is billed as a classic Rankin and Bass cartoon, but I’m not really too sure on that. The basic story goes a little something like this. For some reason, all letters sent to Santa Claus are being returned much to the dismay of the children of Junctionville. The reason behind this? It seems that some resident has declared that Santa is nothing more than a “fraud”, a “fake”, a “myth”. It turns out that the culprit is none other than Albert Mouse. Now the residents of Junctionville must convince Albert that Santa is indeed real in the hopes that Santa will return. What results is a Christmas cartoon that has lost any real charm that it once had.
The charm this has when I was a young child (having seen it a few times here and there), the sense of innocence….is all but gone. Perhaps it’s because I’m older, but I don’t really think that’s the reason as I still love Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer and Frosty the Snowman. I think it’s more that I never really cared for the story told here. The story itself is very basic and really lacks any overall lasting charm that would demand or, really, want any further viewings. There are far better Christmas-themed shows out there, especially the aforementioned ones.
Oh, and as a side note — Warner, what’s going on with charging $24.99 MSRP for a show that runs 24-minutes? $1/min…really?
Video Quality
[Rating:4/5]
The 1:33:1 framed, VC-1 encoded transfer is fairly good. Obviously it wouldn’t be fair to compare it to other current animated titles as this title is nearly 40 years old. I will say that, Warner seems to have done a slight restoration on this as I don’t (granted I was 7 or 8 years old) recall this ever looking this bright. At times the color palette does show off a bit of solid color, mostly the dark blues of the night time. There is a slight layer of grain to the print, but nothing that’s overly annoying; more showing the age of the print. Speaking of the print, I didn’t notice any real damage throughout the brief 24-minute run time. All in all, a fairly solid transfer.
Audio Quality
[Rating:2/5]
The show’s Dolby Digital 1.0 is about as good as a 1 channel audio mix might be. Dialogue is well reproduced for the most part, there are a few moments where dialogue is quite low. Minus the dialogue, there isn’t anything else really to cover here. I do suppose this is a serviceable mix for the material at hand.
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0.5/5]
The provided supplements are shown in SD:
- Christmas: A Global Holiday – This is an animated cartoon that runs close to 8 1/2 minutes. The cartoon itself looks into Christmas and its meaning, but is really quite dull.
The Definitive Word
Overall:
[Rating:2/5]
Let’s face it. There are FAR better Christmas-themed cartoons out there. And let’s not mention the outrageous MSRP on this. I can’t even recommend a rental for this one.
Additional Screen Captures
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[amazon-product]B005BQQD9A[/amazon-product]
BestBuy.com:
Purchase ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:2.5/5]
The Film
[Rating:2/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:2/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:0.5/5]
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