Warner delivers a surprisingly poor transfer for Four Christmases, one riddled with artifacts. The VC-1 encode causes the otherwise fine grain structure to collapse into a sea of digital blocks, at their worst when the couple is in their car.
Some light processing could be an issue, or it’s a result of the blocky encode. Faces appear flat, offering minimal detail. Close-ups are only satisfactory, with weak definition made worse by a general softness that dominates the film. Colors are well saturated, back levels are typically maintained nicely, but this needs a re-encode. 
Lossless TrueHD offers only one real scene of note for audiophiles, that otherwise abysmal jump-a-round scuffle. As kids pop balloons, the subwoofer delivers a satisfying jolt, and the children’s laughter fills the rear speakers.
Everything else is surprisingly flat, including an otherwise lively church service. The expected array of Christmas tunes stay within the stereo channels, offering no rear bleed. Dialogue is mixed well and consistently audible if nothing else.
Warner chooses to load two features onto BD-Live, irritating as the box art lead time gave them the opportunity to put these on the disc itself instead of forcing users to download. Worse, they offer little in terms of value, with one letting the cast detail their holiday memories and the other a brief a selection of outtakes from the Seven Layer Holiday Meals in a Flash skit on the disc (also not worth the time).
A general making-of runs for 10 minutes, and lets you into the world of Hollywood, where studios build and entire house for a single scene that runs less than five minutes. A gag reel is too short to be completely entertaining, and the HBO First Look is blatant promotional tripe. 
Article comments