A Christmas Story 4K UHD Screenshots (Patreon)

Video

Miles better than Warner's ancient VC-1 encoded Blu-ray, this restoration preserves the steamy, nostalgic cinematography. This isn't an easy encoding gig, and it's not always a winning effort. The hazier A Christmas Story gets, the harder it is for the encode to hang on. A slight artifacting appears. Banding shows up (very) slightly on flesh tones in close, but it's subtle.

Otherwise, A Christmas Story looks fantastic in 4K, even if the detail doesn't make dramatic improvements in textural terms. Resolution doesn't make an immediate impression, imagery on the softened side. Definition does improve overall, fidelity more apparent and the mastering finds everything it can. Exteriors show stellar work on homes and leafless brush.

Preserving A Christmas Story's drier color palette, the tiny, nostalgic warmth is preserved. Primaries keep a reasonable saturation, never too bright or bleeding. This pairs well to the HDR bringing significant zip to Christmas lights and other such sources. Exteriors, covered in snow, present a natural baseline contrast to work from. Black levels steer toward providing dimensionality, if typically blander than others.

Audio

In DTS-HD, this stereo mix - which is more mono than anything - preserves a looser, scratchy source. Jean Sheperd's narration sounds especially rough, while the score is trapped in a merely passable mid-range with mild distortion in the few upper registers. A Christmas Story's audio doesn't improve much in reaching a new format.