The Corner Penthouse

Today I'll be doing something a little different from my usual type of review. This will be a "comparison review", which will be a short and sweet comparison between TimeLife's Blu-ray and DVD releases of the Radio City Christmas Spectacular (2007). The DVD, which was released on November 4, 2008, has a runtime of 1:21:01. The Blu-ray, which was released four years later on November 6, 2012, has a runtime of 1:24:08. You'll notice that the Blu-ray is three minutes longer. I'll explain why in a little bit.

When you watch the DVD on a HDTV - as was quite common in 2008 - you will immediately notice something very displeasing.


Yes, for reasons that I can't even fathom, TimeLife decided that a DVD released in 2008 of a program filmed the year before in 16:9 widescreen format should be released in 4:3 letterbox!!! (There's actually a little blackness on the sides, too, making this, technically, "windowboxing".) If it were 1998, I could somewhat understand formatting for a 4:3 television, but not in the late 2000s when HDTVs had overtaken old analog CRT televisions by a wide margin. To make matters worse, the program was filmed in high-definition, and they didn't even bother to do a simultaneous Blu-ray release. Anyone who actually wanted to see the program as intended had to wait a whole FOUR YEARS - and that's assuming they decided to wait to see if it would even get a Blu-ray release at all.

I have done a side-by-comparison of both releases, and there are two edits/alterations between them. The first comes up a mere 17 seconds in when the title screen appears. Here's what you'll see on the Blu-ray.


That's a beautiful title logo celebrating the 75th anniversary of Radio City Music Hall. You won't see it on the DVD, as TimeLife decided to plaster a new generic title logo over it. They likely did this to remove the mention of the 75th anniversary, thinking it would make this release "timeless". Look closely, and you can actually see the fireworks from the original graphic peeking out underneath the new one. Do note that for all further DVD images, I have removed the black bars from the top and bottom. We don't need to see them anymore :-)


The new overlayed graphic appears over the shots before and after the title shot, too. Here's the shot before the title on Blu-ray, followed by DVD.


And here's the shot after the title on Blu-ray, followed by DVD.


Fast forward to the 1:03:40 mark on the Blu-ray and in between the "Christmas Memories" performance by the ushers on the side walls and the curtain opening for "Let Christmas Shine", you will see a three minute short film about the show's history. This whole segment has been completely edited out of the DVD, hence the three minute shorter runtime. It would have appeared right where Chapter 10 starts. If you pay close attention on the DVD, you can see a nearly-hidden dissolve from the start of the history footage (look for snowflakes) to the curtain raising (the big blue oval inside the rectangle).

Thankfully, the production company of that short featurette uploaded a copy of it (sans narration) to YouTube.


The 2-disc Target-exclusive DVD contains the 47 minute documentary Diamond at the Rock on the second disc. This documentary about the history of the Music Hall for it's 75th anniversary, which originally aired on the MSG channel, is carried over to the Blu-ray disc. On the DVD, it was presented in 16:9 widescreen, which made the 4:3 letterboxing of the main program even more inexcusable. Obviously, on the Blu-ray it's also 16:9 widescreen, though now it benefits from being in high definition. The documentary is 30 seconds longer on the Blu-ray because all of the commercial bumpers are included, though they're nothing important.

At this point, I've made it quite clear that the DVD sucks and should be avoided at all costs, but it has one - and only, one - advantage over the Blu-ray. That 2-disc Target-exclusive DVD also contains one bonus feature on disc one: the complete "Santa Flies To New York" animated sequence, albeit in 4:3 letterbox. You'll see bits and pieces of this sequence in the program itself, but it's edited and mixed with audience reaction shots. For whatever reason, TimeLife didn't port this over to the Blu-ray. I can't find it online, so I ripped it from the DVD to show to all of you below. I have re-formatted it from 4:3 to 16:9, which improves the presentation. Because the image is actually in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, there are still some black bars at the top and bottom. A compressed "web friendly" version is enbedded below, but you can also download it as a DVD-R ISO file (403 Mb) that I created. Burn this to a DVD-R and you will have a disc that you can watch in any DVD player, which also contains a high-quality MP4 file on the DVD-ROM portion.


I do have one negative thing to say about the Blu-ray, but it may be limited to my copy only. There's a rather bad glitch/defect at 7:06 when Santa is on stage talking to the folks in the mezzanine. It happens while he's talking, which isn't a good thing, but it's the only defect. Since the Blu-ray is out-of-print (I'm not sure about the DVD), and the eBay seller only offers refunds not replacements, I would have to re-buy it at a possibly higher price in order to see if this defect is in all copies. I'll just live with it. If you also own the Blu-ray disc, feel free to post a comment to let me know if your copy has the same defect.

Obviously, the Radio City Christmas Spectacular Blu-ray is the clear winner and worth tracking down. I saw the Christmas Spectacular with my late parents - they were on time at the time - back in 2009 and loved every minute of it. I immediately bought the DVD, and my heart sunk when I saw the 4:3 letterbox presentation. I was always hoping that it would get a proper release on Blu-ray, but it wasn't until late 2017 (five years after its release) when I thought to look to see if it got one. I'm glad that I did.