Product Description

Experience all the explosive action and shocking twists as Heroes: Season 3 comes to Blu-ray™ Hi-Def! Rediscover the phenomenon in this five-disc set that includes all 25 suspenseful episodes from the third season’s volumes, Villains and Fugitives. Plus, go behind the scenes with the show’s writers, stars and artists as you explore hours of exclusive and revealing bonus features.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4056 in DVD
• Brand: Uni
• Released on: 2009-09-01
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, French, Spanish
• Number of discs: 5
• Dimensions: 1.20 pounds
• Running time: 1020 minutes

Customer Reviews

Best HEROES season so far, special features could have been better
HEROES and LOST are the 2 more ambitious grand scale Sci-Fi series on today's TV. They both have in common stunning visuals spiked by well executed special effects, relentless action, a lot of it brutal and violent, intriguing story lines occasionally hinting critically at today's social and political realities (government-sponsored torture, the erosion of liberties, the roles played by large and secretive transnational corporations), large casts of great actors and the promise of getting at some core secret that would explain 'everything' but which is always elusive.

Of the two, HEROES seemed to be on the verge of self-dissolution last year, following a promising Season One. I am happy to see the series back on track with a vengeance on Season Three.

- CONTENT

HEROES Third season easily tops the first two seasons as the core that survived the frantic struggles of Seasons One and Two understand that 'normal life' is not possible for those blessed or cursed with super powers, not when a government that's jealously trying to maintain its own monopoly on violence is after them and not when there are so many opportunities to 'save the world'. The plot slowly shifts focus from the first 2 seasons' "HEROES vs. the Company" to their constant running and hiding from a secret branch of 'Homeland Security' determined to wipe them out but not before doing a little torture and experimentation on them. Not that what we would politically correctly call 'people with abilities' are all angels. Most of them are not and the struggle continues between the good and the evil ones where the good ones sometimes turn evil and some of the evil ones turn 'good', permanently or only for an episode or two but, interestingly, the old 'company' staff seems to be taking sides between the government and the HEROES and a lot of the plot is driven by their shifting loyalties and what appear to be their own personal agendas.

I hope I will be forgiven but I really don't wish to give away any of the plot's twists and turns because... this season's HEROES is THAT good. It's also possible that most have already watched many or all the episodes on TV and already have an opinion on what HEROES 3 was about. It's probably a lot more productive to discuss the Blu-ray edition which I shall.

My conclusion on 'content' - following the somewhat disappointed 'amputated' Season Two, this Season is a true treat.


- PACKAGING

To my surprise, after being spoiled by some other very tightly packed seasons, this Blu-ray box is quite large. While the 25 episodes where squeezed on only 5 disks, the box is thicker than I expected. On the positive side, the disks seem to be held securely in place by a new and innovative locking mechanism.

There isn't anything other than the disks in the box but brief summaries for each of the 25 episodes can be found on both the back side and on the interior wall that does not hold disks. The folding carton that holds the disks slides inside a cardboard sleeve.


- PICTURE AND SOUND

As expected, it's 1080p video, 16:9 or 1.78:1 - meaning 'full screen' on an HD TV set, no top and bottom bands. Some of the extra features may be in lower resolutions.

The Sound is DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 with English Dolby Digital 2.0 on the features.


- PRESENTATION AND PLAY

The episodes, about 42 minutes each, run for close to 18 hours.

The menu is relatively well designed but it's not perfect. The 'Play' option will play all episodes on a specific disk but, at least on my PS3, it could not resume play once interrupted. It was not possible to do a 'play all but start from the second episode'. To do so, one would start with 'Play', then fast forward or press the chapter skip button to reach the desired start point. Or episodes could be played individually. Individual episodes are not broken into 'scenes' in the menu.

During play, one can take advance of U-Control which can be turned on or off by pressing one of the colored buttons. During playback, Picture in Picture provides cast and crew commentaries. I found this distracting and I was glad to see that it's possible to play the same commentaries separately from the menu. The other U-Control enhancement is the availability of Hero Connections 'post it' like notes that pop on the screen and provide some information about a specific character that's meaningful within the context of the scene that's playing at the time. Each disk allows for the viewing of the updated Connections network separately from playback.

BD-Live allows for the downloading of a Season 4 preview and, being 'live', it's possible that more features may become available in time.

One annoying defect, at least on a PS3 is the playback becoming unresponsive once the Universal screen saver kicks in. After that, it's impossible to resume watching - pressing play/pause/fast-forward would return 'this feature is not available at this time' and pressing STOP would get me out of the movie and force me to reload the disk.


- SPECIAL FEATURES

They are quite few and thin for this season and many are bad enough to almost cross into the 'unwatchable' territory. After being spoiled with treats such as the story/legend of Takezo Kensei on Season 2, this season's disappoint. There are the obligatory 'behind the scenes' interviews but there is very little as far as 'creative content' is concerned. The short Pinehearst Commercial reminded me of the similar feature we watched while waiting to enter the Terminator 3-D show at the Universal Studios park in Florida and the Alternate Stories features are so bad, one wonders how they made it even as 'extra' features. Same for the Deleted Scenes - clearly, they were deleted for a good reason and watching them proves the director's wisdom not to include them.


- RATING

CONTENT - 5 Stars
PACKAGING - 4 Stars (could have been thinner)
PICTURE - 5 Stars
SOUND - 5 Stars
PRESENTATION AND PLAYBACK - 3.5 Stars
SPECIAL FEATURES - 2 Stars (big disappointment)

OVERALL (subjectively weighted average) - 4 Stars

Great series, very cheap discs and box
The show is great.
The plastic holder for the discs are very cheap.
First set came all broken with lots of plastic pieces everywhere.
Second one send by Amazon was in good state. Although, the box is made with very cheap materials, so it will be very likely you will break the disc holder pieces while manipulating the discs.

Also the discs, you can see through them not even facing towards light. Seems like it is a bare disc without protective layer on the top. I'm afraid this discs wont last long. They look really really cheap material, even for a CD.
Reminds me of 10 cents CD-Rs....

Good thing Amazon was kind enough to let me keep both sets (live outside US, yay... had to pay 12$ for the shipment the 1st time and 12$ for the same set the 2nd time.... wish I lived in the US), hopefully if some of the discs go bad, I got a 2nd set there as backup...

Cant wait until season 4
I really didnt think that season 4 was going to be that good. Characters that I didnt like I started to like as the pot gets really deep. If you are into Heroes then you need to see this season, no ifs ands or buts about it. Plus its on blu-ray, picture is sharp and detailed.