Photo: Universal Home Entertainment

This is part two of my Blu-ray review for both "Heroes" Season One and Season Two, both of which hit stores today, August 26, 2008. In this part I will discuss the special features and more technical side of the releases. You can read my opinion on the second season itself in Part One right here.

Yesterday I pretty much slobbered all over the second season of "Heroes", telling how I thought it was better than the first season and how much I felt it was leading us to a fantastic third season with a wide range of possibilities. Today I am here to discuss the special features of today's Blu-ray releases of both the first and second season as well as the DVD features on the second season set. I did a similar style review when Universal released the HD DVD and DVD versions of season one back in August 2007 (read that here), and HD DVD owners looking to switch to the new Blu-ray release are only going to find one major technical difference in season one and one minor difference in features on season one, but depending on your dedication to high definition I won't be surprised if you make the switch to go Blu. Let's get started.

First off, I am going to quickly cover the first season release since I am sure many of you already own the first season on DVD and are curious about whether or not you should upgrade at the same time you make the decision on what format to buy with season two. For those of you that bought the HD DVD version I am sure you are a little upset since that bad boy cost upwards of $70 and the Blu-ray edition is carrying the same price tag ($69.95). Unfortunately for you, those HD DVD releases weren't flip discs with the DVD version on the other side so you have to decide between Blu and DVD because I doubt you are going to keep that HD DVD player for too long. Hopefully I can help with that decision.

First off, the ability of Blu-ray to hold more information on each disc means the first season Blu-ray release is made up of only five discs instead of the seven that made up the HD DVD release. I will tell you there is no major visual difference (more on that later). However, the audio difference is immense. It appears all of Universal's Blu-ray releases are going to come equipped with DTS sound standard as has been the case with every BD release from Universal so far and the "Heroes" Blu-ray releases are no different with the DTS sound dominating the HD DVD Dolby Digital Plus tracks. In terms of special features there is no difference outside of the fact that the awful Genetic Abilities Test is gone (good riddance) as well as the rather cool "Helix Revealed" U-Control feature. The "Helix" feature is actually one I enjoyed from the HD DVD as it pointed out any time the all-important helix symbol was seen hidden inside a normal scene in the show. Unfortunately it looks like it has been lost to the HD DVD gods.

Outside of those differences you still get all the deleted scenes, picture-in-picture video commentaries, making of featurettes, profile of Wendy and Lisa talking about the show's score and so on are all still here. For a detailed description about the features for season one go here where I address them all including the 73-minute extended premiere episode as it appeared on the DVD and HD DVD releases last year.

One thing I was surprised about the first season release was that there wasn't a commentary on each episode. I wrote, "I personally see this as a show that should have a commentary on every single episode, and considering the massive size of the cast I don't know how they couldn't pull it off." Well, even though the second season is only 11 episodes rich, each episode has its own individual video commentary for the Blu-ray editions and audio commentaries for the DVD edition. The commentaries are also more interesting as a result of the show being about more than a silly tagline. The second season is about character and on top of that the season itself endured some issues especially when it came to the writers' strike. These factors made for more interesting commentaries, especially when Greg Grunberg wasn't speaking as he felt it was more about joking around rather than offering up anything of consequence. I am all for joking around, but at least be funny. Creator Tim Kring brings the most to the table each time he is involved in the discussion as well as his part in explaining the alternate ending to the season and the additional shots from the never aired (or completed) episodes 12 and 13 I mentioned in part one.

I was probably most disappointed when the season two finale came around and the commentary was led by executive producer Allan Arkush and composers Lisa Coleman and Wendy Melvoin. Uh, who cares what the composers have to say about the season finale ? Bad choices there. However, stars Zachary Quinto, Milo Ventimiglia, Kristen Bell, Jack Coleman and Masi Oka all make a showing as do several of the series' directors and producers. It's a mixed bag, which keeps it fresh, but that season finale was a serious WTF moment.

Each Blu-ray disc also features a "Hero Connections" feature in which you get a bulletin board visual representation of the characters on the show with special powers and how they are all connected and who is still alive. The bulletin board updates from disc to disc and soon there is more than just one person with a red "X" covering their face. It is a pretty cool feature the first time you see it, but it wears on you. The first time I saw it on HD DVD I was much more impressed, but now on Blu-ray it is just old hat.

Among the rest of the features there are a couple of mockumentaries and generic behind-the-scenes usuals, but the best of the making-of stuff is a four-part feature called "Genetics of a Scene" looking at four different scenes from the show. It goes into the hows and whys of four specific scenes concerning how they were shot. The feature itself was put together in such a way that it didn't seem like the generic stuff we have come to be used to. It was far more engaging and really kept you interested.

As far as the Second Season DVD is concerned you get everything I have talked about except all the video commentaries are just audio commentaries, there are no "Hero Connections" features and instead of high-definition video and DTS sound you get a standard DVD picture and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround. In terms of which version you should buy it really comes down to how picky you are.

If you want to buy the first two seasons of "Heroes" on DVD it is going to cost you $61.89 before tax and shipping at Amazon. If you want to go Blu-ray it is going to run you $110.90 before tax and shipping at Amazon. A $49 difference is a big one in my opinion. However, if I loved a show and wanted it to look its very best whenever I watched it I would spend the extra money. I know there are "Heroes" fans that feel this way, but for those of you that a little bit better picture and vastly improved sound quality aren't that important you should probably stick with the DVD versions. Then again, I have a little something more to say about that "better" picture.

A final, and potentially important, word on the Blu-ray releases is that there is an awfully large amount of video noise throughout both the first and second seasons. I bring this up because it isn't only a couple of times here and there, and I probably wouldn't mention it at all if there was any kind of consistency to it. I first noticed it early on when one character was wearing a solid red shirt and it was filled with noise and looked like an extremely garbled picture. I thought it may have something to do with the solid color and how bright it was, but only a few minutes later there were scenes filled with red and while the noise did show up at times there were others where it wasn't there. I am not sure if different film stock was used in these instances or if it was intentional, but it also becomes apparent in some of the darker scenes as well and I am sure many HD enthusiasts would complain about it intensely.

I went back and looked at a few of the scenes that bothered me in the Blu-ray release and compared them to the HD DVD version. As it turns out the HD DVD version had a similar problem, but the colors don't pop off the screen as much and therefore it isn't as noticeable, but had I noticed it in the first place I think it would have bothered me just as much. I recently mentioned the video noise factor with Universal's Blu-ray release of Miami Vice as well, which Michael Mann shot in digital. "Heroes", I believe, is shot on 35mm film stock so that wouldn't be the problem, but it is certainly a strange occurance that could potentially turn a lot of people off. Considering the BD versions are going to run you around $50 extra it may be something you want to consider before forking your dollars over. It's almost as if the medium has surpassed its source, something I never would have even thought possible, but everything around these noisy moments looks too perfect for it not to become glaringly obvious.

This ends the second part of my Season 2 DVD/Blu-ray review. You can read Part One in which I go over the show itself right here.

Related post categories: Blu-ray, Home Video News, Reviews : Heroes

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