The budget Disney set for A Christmas Carol was really seemingly so high for 2 reasons; 1) Hopes that it would live on every Christmas like The Polar Express, which took a few years to earn it's budget back and/or 2) To "take one for the team" and advance the digital technology a little further.  What Director Robert Zemeckis didn't count on was the unleashing of Avatar which trumps Zemeckis' own motion capture technology that he has been using since The Polar Express. 

This is a different kind of motion capture than Cameron's though, at least anything we've seen thus far from Cameron.  Avatar was humanoid aliens, meaning they weren't meant to look anything close to humans aside from having a head, two legs and two arms.  What Zemeckis has done (twice now) is attempt to capture the human spirit inside of a cartoon, something of which he only half-succeeds.  Like Japan's Final Fantasy series which is a good-looking mouth away from perfecting their own, Zemeckis is missing a piece as well.  He has the mouth and teeth down but his eyes and motions seem surreal still (though it is claimed that the eyes in all the characters are actually those of the actors).

QUALITY:
Fantastic.  The picture is clear and the sound is flawless.

BONUS FEATURES:
Featurettes, deleted scenes, an advent calendar (Blu-Ray only), a behind-the-scenes of the motion-capturing technology.

Last summer, we were invited to attend an event preceding the release of the movie which showed off the motion capture technology, which is essentially what you get to see in the special features.  Aside from that, the bonus features are empty and useless, a surprising move for Disney which usually packs these full.  The quality of this transfer is amazing and the movie is also good if you like Dickens.  This wasn't really an update in anything other than special effects as Scrooge's encounter with the Ghost of Christmas Future is pushing the boundaries of the PG rating and may be a little over the top for kid's of certain ages, not to mention the deeper storyline involved throughout the movie.