Peanuts: Holiday Collection 4K Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Peanuts: Holiday Collection 4K Blu-ray Movie Review

You're an Unlikely 4K Release, Charlie Brown

Reviewed by Michael Reuben October 22, 2017

In addition to releasing three Peanuts holiday specials on UHD, Warner Brothers and Peanuts Worldwide are offering all three in single set, along with their standard Blu-ray counterparts. The set does not include any new extras, unless one counts the exceptionally fragile case holding multiple inserts that appears to have been designed for the express purpose of shattering during shipment. Mine arrived from Warner's PR department in a snowstorm of plastic fragments, but fortunately the discs were undamaged.

As noted in the individual reviews of these releases, the Peanuts TV episodes are an unlikely candidate for UHD. The animation style is deliberately bare-bones, providing little or no fine detail for higher resolution to reveal. The frames are colorful enough, but a well-mastered Blu-ray from a superior source is more than capable of conveying the animators' artistry without the demands of HDR encoding. I can only conclude that someone in authority at Peanuts Worldwide is a UHD fan and has insisted that Peanuts join the fledgling format's vanguard. But whoever was in charge of these releases made a serious error in not remastering all three of the previously released Blu-rays for these titles. Only A Charlie Brown Christmas has had its Blu-ray iteration upgraded with a new scan and content, and the omission of equivalent Blu-ray remasters for A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is a significant disincentive. (For more on this point, please see the individual reviews.)

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown is reviewed here, along with two additional specials.

A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving is reviewed here, along with two additional specials.

A Charlie Brown Christmas is reviewed here, along with two additional specials.

All of the nine Peanuts specials included in this set are offered in a choice of aspect ratios, 1.78:1 or 1.33:1—but only on UHD. The choice is available on Blu-ray for the three episodes in the Christmas set, but not for those on Great Pumpkin or Thanksgiving. One example of comparative screenshots is provided below, and others are included with the review of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Peanuts: Holiday Collection 4K Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

A video evaluation and 1080p screenshots of It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown can be found here here.

A video evaluation and 1080p screenshots of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving can be found here.

A video evaluation and 1080p screenshots of A Charlie Brown Christmas can be found here.

All of the nine Peanuts specials included in this set are offered in a choice of aspect ratios, 1.78:1 or 1.33:1—but only on UHD. One example of comparative screenshots is provided below, and others are included with the review of A Charlie Brown Christmas.

Peanuts: Holiday Collection 4K Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Audio evaluations of each release can be found in their respective reviews.

Peanuts: Holiday Collection 4K Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No extras appear on the UHD discs. The accompanying Blu-rays carry over extras that have been previously released. See the individual reviews for specifics.

Peanuts: Holiday Collection 4K Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

I doubt whether there's a meaningful overlap between Peanuts fans and UHD early adopters, but however big that group may be, this Holiday Collection was tailor-made for them. For everyone else, proceed with caution. The standout entry in this collection is A Charlie Brown Christmas, because the producers remastered the Blu-ray disc, thereby allowing access to all of that set's new content even for those who don't own a 4K setup.