Peanuts Classics Holiday Collection Box Set and
It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown
Distributed by
Paramount
Cert: Unrated, but suitable for all ages
Cat.no:
Paramount 15614 (Holiday Classics box set of 3)
Paramount 15613 (A Charlie Brown Christmas)
Paramount 15611 (It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown)
Paramount 15612 (A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving)
Paramount 83944 (It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown)
(for "A Charlie Brown Christmas", differs for other shows)
Charlie Brown: Peter Robbins
Lucy Van Pelt: Tracy Stratford
Linus Van Pelt: Christopher Shea
Schroeder/Shermy: Chris Doran
Pig-pen: Geoffrey Ornstein
Patty: Karen Mendelson
Sally Brown: Cathy Steinberg
Freida: Ann Altieri
Violet: Sally Dryer
Snoopy: Bill Melendez
In the USA, Paramount have issued four DVDs of Peanuts shows, 3 "holiday
classics" titles with 2 shows each, and 1 with a new direct-to-video
title. The DVDs are:
A Charlie Brown Christmas & It's Christmastime Again, Charlie Brown
It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown & You're Not Elected,
Charlie Brown
Charlie Brown Thanksgiving & This is America, Charlie Brown: The
Mayflower Voyagers
It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown
The three holiday DVDs are also available in a box set called the
"Peanuts Classic Holiday Collection." There's nothing different
between the box set and the three DVDs individually except a
cardboard slip case.
The Peanuts DVDs look excellent! The picture on all of them is
sharp, clean, and bright. They're so good that you can sometimes see
the slight shadows the cels cast on the background. I compared the
DVDs with a my VHS tapes, and the videos looked washed out by
comparison. The picture quality on a couple of the shows ("The
Mayflower Voyagers", "You're Not Elected, Charlie Brown") is not
quite as good as the best, but it's still very good.
I didn't see any compression artifacts in the pictures. While some
have criticized Paramount for only putting 2 episodes per DVD, at
least they took advantage of the extra space - the DVDs have the
highest data transmission rate of any DVD I own.
Okay, the pictures aren't perfectly pristine - there are a few
scratches and dots here and there, but they're uncommon and minor.
Paramount used the same digitally cleaned masters for the DVDs as
were used for the Paramount VHS releases. There are a few times,
usually during rapid motion, where black outlines break up - this is
probably a side effect of the digital cleaning (it happens on the VHS
tapes as well), but it's transitory. For video that's over 30 years
on in some cases, it looks quite good overall.
The menus on the DVDs are simple, but easy to use and pleasantly
designed with bold graphics - there's none of the animation overload
and difficulty telling what options you're selecting as there are on
many DVD menus.
The DVDs, with the exception of "It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown"
don't include any extras beyond subtitles. "It's the Pied Piper,
Charlie Brown" includes a short 12-minute "retrospective interview
with Charles Schulz," which features Schulz interview clips where he
talks about the characters and the TV shows, clips from the animated
TV shows, and photos. The material is all drawn from previous TV
documentaries, but it's a nice short selection.
If I had to find a quibble, it would be with the audio on the 3
"holiday classic" DVDs, which is quieter than on most DVDs, and yet I
noticed a few hints of distortion, mostly when someone was speaking.
But the soundtracks were after all not designed with modern home
theater systems in mind. As such, they are only presented in
monophonic sound.
The sound on "It's the Pied Piper, Charlie Brown" is much louder, and
it's in Dolby 2.1 Stereo, nicely showing off David Benoit's music.
(Advance press for the PIED PIPER DVD said that it would have a Dolby
5.1 soundtrack and both English and Spanish subtitles, but it appears
that the DVD only has the 2.1 stereo audio track and only English
subtitles.)
Final analysis? The Peanuts shows have never looked better than they
do on these DVD releases and I'm looking forward to more being
released in the future.
As of April 2009, Blu-rays and DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TH-37PX80B
37" Plasma TV with a Sony BDP-1500 Blu-ray player and played through a Yamaha DSP-AX820 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Jan 2011: Intel Quad Core Dell XPS 8100, i7 CPU 860 @ 2.80Ghz, 8Gb RAM, nVidia GeForce GTS 240, Windows 7
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
