Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Ever since it came out in the late-1980's, "Christmas Vacation" has been an annual viewing tradition for millions of people. The movie is up there with "Miracle On 34th Street", "It's A Wonderful Life", the Santa Clause Trilogy and "I'll Be Home For Christmas" (although on the language front, Vacation is nowhere as clean as those other classics). Unfortunately, Warner's has not done a good job with the Blu-Ray. I also own the film on DVD, so I'm able to compare the two, and I would have to say that the DVD provides your best bang for your buck. On my 40" 1080p TV the upressed DVD looks equal to the Blu-Ray (the Blu-Ray has a bit that, for the most part, is right around the 10.0 to 15.0Mbps, with the occasional section between 20.0 and 25.0Mbps). Warner's did not put any effort into this Blu-Ray. I've never seen this movie on VHS, but others have told me that when they compared the VHS and DVD versions, they didn't find any real difference in terms of the master used. So it could be possible that this is a transfer that was made in the 1980's and was intended for airing on the old analog MUSE HDTV system that was in use in some parts of the world in the 1980's and 1990's. Audio wise, again the Blu-Ray features the DVD's same Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround track at a whopping 192kbps. The special features are also the same: theatrical trailer and cast audio commentary. If you are looking for a copy of this video, just get the Standard Definition DVD version and just allow your DVD/Blu-Ray player to upconvert the video to High Definition.