"Christmas Vacation"(CV) is one of our favorite Christmas movies, along with "A Christmas Story"(ACS), so I was anxiously looking forward to watching them in HD. We were terribly disappointed when we saw CV! Instead of a sharp, vibrant picture as we have seen in other redone oldies, this was grainy and dull (unlike ACS). After watching it, I put my non HD dvd of CV in the HD player, and saw little difference in picture quality. At times I felt the non HD version had better color!!??
ACS was like watching an entirely new movie, however, and I could see many things clearly for the first time in the HD version.
I rated CV 2 stars simply because I love the story, but would rate it as zero stars for HD quality!
What happened WB?

Update: After posting this review, I sent an email to Warner Bros complaining about the quality. I receved a prompt reply with instructions as to how to get a prepaid return envelope to WB so they could replace it. Dubious, I followed the instructions, returned the DVD, and received a new one after a week or so. Yesterday, still dubious, I watched it. OK, now I have a good quality HD version of Christmas Vacation - just what you would expect from an HD-DVD. Thanks WB! I would now rate it as 5 stars.





The Update is what puzzled me.

Are there two encodes out for Christmas Vacation?

Interesting indeed.

Maybe they received the DVD by mistake?

I donno.

I'd beleive the PQ was shoddy based on the PQ review thread.


Christmas Vacation 2.6 Stars User Poll Ratings (Vote!) AVS REVIEW


Just makes me curious if there are two versions floating around, and only 1 that sucks. Because I don't own this movie on VHS or DVD, and would love to buy it, but if it's no better than DVD, I can't see spending 20$ on a 5$ bargain bin movie.

The sd version better than the HD DVD version? I've had the sd version for a couple of years and finally ebayed it. It doesn't come close to the HD DVD version. So I don't know what the Amazon person is referencing. But there's a lot of weird things being stated on that site.