Barney's Night Before Christmas (1999)

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General		Extras
Category	Childrens	Main Menu Audio & Animation Menu Audio Storybook-2 DVD-ROM Extras Audio-Only Track-5-Song Sampler from Happy Holidays. Love, Barney Scene Selection Anim & Audio Biographies-Character Biographies-Cast & Crew Notes-What We Learnt Today Trailer-8 Audio-Only Track-10
Rating
Year Of Production	1999
Running Time	56:11
RSDL / Flipper	Dual Layered	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Menu
Region Coding	4	Directed By	Ben Vaughn
Studio Distributor	Barney Home Video Roadshow Home Entertainment	Starring	Marisa Kuers Mera Baker Angel Velasco Chase Gallatin
Case	Village Roadshow New Style
RPI	$34.95	Music	Bob Singleton

    I ended up reviewing this DVD because all the other site reviewers were strangely silent when this title came up for allocation. Funny that. I also ended up reviewing this DVD because way back when the first BarneyTM DVD was released, I reviewed it, for the same reason. Anyway, enough whinging and on with the review.

    BarneyTM's Night Before Christmas is set on Christmas Eve. BarneyTM helps the children to put up their Christmas decorations, both inside and out, accompanied by a series of songs. They then get to travel to the North Pole in order to meet Santa Claus and Mrs Claus and get a tour of his toy factory, all the while being accompanied by various Barney^TMized Christmas songs.

    Call me Scrooge, but I find it hard to see the educational value in this program, despite the efforts of the creators to claim it has educational value. There wouldn't be a Jihad To Destroy Barney if that were the case.

Video

    The transfer is presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1. It is not 16x9 enhanced.

    The transfer is superbly sharp and detailed, with immense amounts of detail visible at all times. The quality of the lighting employed on these sets is remarkable, with every detail revealed precisely. Shadow detail is limited simply by the fact that no scenes are poorly lit and hence there is no opportunity for this transfer to exhibit good shadow detail. There is absolutely no low level noise to be seen anywhere in this image.

    Colours were beautifully rendered, with vibrant primary and secondary colours splashed liberally across the image. Even BarneyTM's purple was nicely rendered, although he was slightly less detailed than the rest of the image. Fortunately, there is absolutely no colour bleed whatsoever to interfere with the vibrant colour palette on offer.

    Neither MPEG artefacts, nor film-to-video artefacts, nor video artefacts were seen in this exceptionally clear and clean transfer.

    This disc is Dual Layered, with no apparent layer change during the main programme.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The dialogue early on in the movie sounded dubbed and heavily processed, but it improved as the transfer continued. There was never any issue with intelligibility or audio sync.

    The music in this programme is credited to Bob Singleton, and has the characteristic cheap, synthesized sound of typical BarneyTM music.

    There was no activity in the surround channels.

    The subwoofer, whilst not being over-bearing, did accompany the songs quite robustly, adding a nice solid bottom end to this soundtrack.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

Menu

Read-Along Storybooks

Song Sampler from Happy Holidays, Love, BarneyTM

Scene Selection Animation & Audio

Biographies-Character

Biographies-Cast & Crew

Notes-What We Learned Today

BarneyTM Video Previews (8)

BarneyTM CD/Cassette Preview (10)

DVD-ROM Games (8)

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall