Overall, I like the layout and packaging of this Blu-ray release a little more...
D.L. Hawkins (Leonard Roberts): D.L. is the father in the show´s superhero family, which consists of himself, his wife Nikki Sanders and his son Micah. The Hawkins family is the only genetically powerful family showcased in the show, as the Bennet family has adopted Claire and not passed powers to her. In the early going, D.L. is a man on the run after a stealing a substantial amount of money and killing a security guard. D.L.´s super powers involve the ability to phase shift himself with physical objects. He can reach through objects and have objects pass through him. D.L. kidnaps his son from the troubled Nikki, but must eventually face Mr. Linderman in regards to his son and the reasoning for the powers possessed by he and his wife. Hawkins is another character that is involved in the plotlines of the show, but I never found myself truly interested in. Roberts isn´t a bad actor, but D.L. is less interesting than "Lost´s" fatherly Michael.
Nikki Sanders (Ali Larter): Ali Larter is "Heroes" resident babe. Every show needs a gorgeous woman to succeed on prime time and the character of Nikki Sanders is the one written into this show. Sure, the cheerleader is attractive, but in many states, an interest in her is not legal. Nikki has a split personality. Her ´good´ side is that of an Internet stripper who makes money by charging clients by the minute. One of her clients is Hiro´s best friend Ando Masahashi (James Kyson Lee). Nikki borrowed money from Linderman to fund Micah´s private schooling and must make due while her husband is running from the law. She is a caring mother and does what she can. Unfortunately, her ´bad´ side is named Jessica and she is an assassin with superhuman strength and a penchant for violence and murder. The character´s duality causes problems with all of those around her and her husband D.L. must keep Micah away from her dangerous half-self. Eventually, Jessica becomes the dominant personality and comes under the employment of the darker forces in the show. Ali Larter is a lovely lady and for us male fans of the show, she serves as the series´ eye candy. Although her character has two personalities, I do not feel that Nikki/Jessica has been overly fleshed out.
Micah Sanders (Noah Gray-Cabey): Micah is the son of Nikki and D.L. and is a child prodigy. Micah has an uncanny ability to rebuild and repair technology. His intelligence is exceptional and although his grades are desired by the private school he is initially enrolled in, his mother does not make enough money to keep him there. Micah´s parents believe that they were experimented on by Mr. Linderman and that Micah is perhaps the result of those experiments. Aside from a laptop, Micah is able to fix telephones and other mechanical devices. Although the show does not exhibit other abilities or aspects afforded to Micah by his intelligence, he may be capable of even greater things that what have been revealed. I have to give some credit to young actor Noah Gray-Cabey. Hopefully, the second season will make his character a little more interesting.
Isaac Mendez (Santiago Cabrera): Isaac is an artist and a comic book writer that has the ability to detail the future through his works when he is under the influence of drugs. The comic book that leads Hiro on his quest came from Isaac. Paintings showing horrific events from around the world litter his studio. Isaac painted the picture of a New York City involved in a cataclysmic explosion and he painted a picture of Claire in peril. Isaac loves Simone, but his powers and drug addiction are troublesome. He views Peter as a rival for those affections, but works with the fellow hero to thwart the destruction of New York City and to save Claire from Sylar. Isaac is confronted by Hiro as well and eventually comes face-to-face with the villainous Sylar. Isaac was an intriguing character and I felt that Cabrera did a solid job of crafting a performance of a man with the torments and problems of Isaac.
Sylar (Zachary Quinto): Sylar begins his existence as Gabriel Gray, a talented watchmaker. He has lived a normal life, but has always strived to be something special. He is the first subject studied by DNA and Evolutionary scientist Chandra Suresh (Erick Avari). Suresh cannot find anything special with Sylar and gives up researching him. This angers Sylar and sends him on a spree where he kills those confirmed with powers from a stolen list and digests and masters their abilities. This reveals Sylar´s ´special´ ability and he continues to grow stronger and stronger as he kills more and more heroes. He is stopped by Peter Petrelli when he attempts to kill Claire. This sets in motion the events that make Sylar and Peter the good and evil rivals with similar abilities. Zachary Quinto is someone I feel will be a star. He has already secured a role as the next Mr. Spock in an upcoming "Star Trek" movie. His performance as Sylar is understated brilliance. After Matt Parker and Peter Petrelli, Sylar is perhaps my third favorite character of the show.
Video:
"Heroes" returns in high definition to the Blu-ray format sporting the same compression algorithm as its HD-DVD predecessor and I did not notice any discernable differences between the two releases. Since "Heroes" was initially released back on August 28, 2007 on the defunct format, a number of other shows have made their high definition debut. Some have looked better and some have looked worse. My first experience with television on high definition media was "Sopranos: Season Six: Part One" on Blu-ray and I felt "Heroes" looked better at that time. It still does. Television is still slowly making the transition to HDTV and more and more shows are being formatted for 1080 friendly releases. "Heroes" was one of the early pioneers and after a year this first season still holds up quite well. As I stated in the previous review, disc-based high definition is an improvement over broadcast HD. You don´t get the pixilation and other bandwidth and noise based problems that you get with broadcast. At least, I find all types of motion artifacts and whatnot with Comcast Digital HDTV. In a year this has not changed much and watching "Heroes" on a high definition disc is a marked improvement over broadcast.
Universal has released the show with a pristine 1.78:1/VC-1 transfer. The supplements and deleted scenes were not contained in high definition, but each episode and the show´s uncut pilot were all in glorious high definition. The show is a very nicely shot picture and although I don´t feel it is nearly as visually stunning as my beloved "Lost," it is among the better looking shows on television. About the only complaint with the visuals for the show is that high definition has a way of betraying budget-consciencious special effects shots. Regardless, "Heroes" is shot with enough detail and sufficient photography that the series can rival any number of more expensive Hollywood films and the show bests not just catalog releases on the Blu-ray format, but a few of the newer releases. We have been enjoying the benefits of High Definition media for quite some time now and have seen a number of inferior releases to "Heroes." This is a good looking release ever after one year.
The technical aspects of the release are solid. The colors are nicely saturated and come across effectively for each of the twenty three episodes. The reds of Claire´s cheerleader outfit nicely compare to the green grass under Hiro´s feet as he gazes into the sky and the show´s iconic solar eclipse. Each character exhibits natural skin coloring and this is holds up strongly regardless of the lighting Ali Larter is being shot in. The contrast and black levels of the show are strong as well. I did notice a few minor instances where the blacks could have been deeper, but I´m not going to get to fussy with a television show. Detail is very strong and a few of the exterior shots were especially nicely rendered in high definition. There are instances when the detail starts to revert back to looking like a DVD, but I chalk this up to the show being filmed for television and not the big screen. Every television show has these ´soft´ scenes and this one is no exception. Since the time I had written the HD-DVD review for "Heroes" I was able to witness "Lost" and felt that was only slightly superior to the "Heroes: The Complete First Season" transfer and since that time I can no longer conclude that this title is the best looking show on high definition. It still bests the "Sopranos."
Sound:
Universal has been shying away from Dolby Digital Plus since they moved over to Blu-ray and "Heroes" benefits from that change of philosophy with a nearly identical DTS-HD Lossless Master Audio 5.1 surround mix. The additional bandwidth doesn´t provide an experience much different than last year´s release, but perhaps the absolute best gear could churn up a noticeable difference. My equipment couldn´t sway me into feeling it is any better. Part of this is because you can never expect much out of the soundtrack of a television show. Although "Heroes" has been delivered with a decent 5.1 multi-channel soundtrack mix, the show is not very groundbreaking or earth shattering in its sonic capabilities. Much of this is in the sound design elements of the show. For one, television tends to have a flatter range and vocals that are more in-line with the volume level of everything else that is happening. Most viewers watch a show through their television speakers and this doesn´t translate to a full enveloping experience and shows need to be created to satisfy the general populace and not just those of us with capable and ready home theater setups.
That being said, "Heroes" is technically sound in the audio department. The show is primarily dialogue based and except for the finale, there is not a ton of action that takes place during the season. This is one of my gripes that I forgot to point out in my main review; "Heroes" is more drama than adventure. The "X-Files" had more action and "Lost" certainly has more action. However, aside from the random flight of a Petrelli brother or the sound of a subway car, there is not a lot of action to allow the Dolby Digital soundtrack of "Heroes" to possess much life. The show´s score is robust for a television production and very pleasing. The music spent more time in the rear channels than any of the sound effects. In general, the show´s sound is handled by the front three speakers. The center channel effectively contains and delivers the show´s all-important dialogue and it does it with aplomb. The rears do get used and there are a number of effects that populate them, but the surround channels seem to be used to get an audience´s attention and to not simply add to the listening experience.
Extras:
"Heroes" has been reformulated for its Blu-ray release. The episodes have been placed on just five platters instead of seven and special features have now been rearranged to feel a little more fitting and organized. The coveted U-Control functionality has been ported over to Blu-ray, with the exception of the "Helix Revealed" portion. However, the "Helix Revealed" U-Control feature on the HD-DVD disc was hardly notable and will not be missed. The Hero Connections was formerly called "Character Connections" and this feature details how each character related to each other. The chart becomes more convoluted as time passes, but it is an interesting feature. The second U-Control feature is the Artwork Presentations and all episodes aside from "Six Months Ago," "The Fix," "Company Man," "Run!" and "Landslide" features this U-Control option. This neat feature allows you to zoom in on Isaac´s work and look at the paintings closely. It is quite cool.
The U-Control functionality expands to include Picture-in-Picture video commentaries. Eight episodes utilize this ability and they are generally worth checking out. The third disc includes PiP functionality for the episodes "Godsend" and "The Fix." All of the episodes on both discs four and five have PiP enabled. This includes "Distractions," ".07%," "Five Years Gone," "The Hard Part," "Landslide" and "How to Stop an Exploding Man." Those that lend their time to the PiP commentaries varies from episode to episode and I was surprised to see that the show´s creator Tim Kring appears only on "How to Stop an Exploding Man." Still, diehard fans of "Heroes" will not want to miss out on this feature. Profile 1.1 is required for Picture-in-Picture to properly function.
Nearly all of the bonus content is now on the first disc. The most noteworthy of these pieces of value added content is the Unaired Pilot: The Tim Kring Cut (75:40) that features optional audio commentary with Tim Kring. This longer vision of the show´s beginning finds a few new characters and one of my favorites, Matt Parkman, introduced much earlier. Matt had a different wife in this unaired pilot and he hoped to be a SWAT officer and not a detective. A different ´Hero´ was introduced, one very similar to a character later introduced in the series. A few other minor subplots were also included, as well as some further fleshing out of Claire. I enjoyed the unaired pilot and felt it was a great supplement.
The featurettes that were formerly located on the seventh disc have been moved up to populate the first platter. The first, Making Of (9:59) provides a detailed a quick overview on the making of the show. This was a ten thousand foot view, but did contain a few nice nuggets of information. The second feature, Special Effects (8:44), was on the special effects and looked at the cataclysmic scene from the finale, as well as some other character based effects created for the show. This was perhaps the best of the vignettes. A third feature looks at The Stunts (10:21) and how the various characters handled their stunts. On Profile of Artist Tim Sale (11:25) Tim Sale, who painted the artwork associated with the character Isaac discusses his work on the show and a quartet of persons talks about the show´s score during The Score (8:57), the final vignette.
The first Blu-ray platter also includes BD-Live functionality for BD-Live Ready players. The packaging states that "Disc One is BD-Live Ready. Look for announcements at www.UniversalHiDef.com when Universal launches BD-Live." Unfortunately, folks it is currently not ready and at the time of this review you cannot access features that I will assume will include the Mind Reader, Download Center and Genetics Abilities Tests that were part of the HD-DVD release. This type of functionality was definitely where HD-DVD excelled and these features were available on that format at launch. Hopefully, they will appear in the near future, but until that time the information on those features will not be included on this review.
One of the main bonus features that is spread out over all discs is the 50 Deleted Scenes. I´ve counted them and there are exactly fifty scenes and if my math is correct the scenes run for roughly forty nine minutes and twenty seconds. The quality of this excised material varies and you really have to dig through this rather large collection of deleted scenes to find the real good moments that shouldn´t be missed. The first episode "Genesis" and the episode "Nothing to Hide" constitute roughly one third of all the bonus material, but many of the scenes in "Genesis" are worth looking at. Oddly, the fifth and final disc adds only two minutes and four seconds of deleted scenes to the mix. Here is a list of what each episode has to offer:
Disc 1 (14:39)
"Genesis" (8 scenes: 6:42)
"Don´t Look Back" (4 scenes: 3:39)
"One Giant Leap" (2 scenes: 4:17)
Disc 2 (15:57)
"Collision" (2 scenes: 0:52)
"Hiros" (3 scenes: 2:34)
"Nothing to Hide" (8 scenes: 9:36)
"Seven Minutes to Midnight" (3 scenes: 2:53)
Disc 3: (8:30)
"Homecoming" (1 scene: 0:59)
"Six Months Ago" (2 scenes: 2:31)
"Fallout" (1 scene: 1:45)
"Godsend" (2 scenes: 1:53)
"The Fix" (1 scene: 1:19)
Disc 4: (8:14)
"Distractions" (3 scenes: 2:14)
"Run!" (3 scenes: 3:25)
"Company Man" (3 scenes: 1:47)
"Parasite" (1 scene: 0:46)
Disc 5: (2:04)
".07%" (1 scene: 0:29)
"Five Years Gone" (1 scene: 0:42)
"Landslide" (1 scene: 0:53)
Closing:
"Heroes: The Complete First Season" returns again on high definition for its Blu-ray release. Universal has made some changes and the box set will once again test technology with support for both Profile 1.1 and Profile 2.0 players. However, at the time of this review´s writing the Profile 2.0 materials are not active. The added storage space of the Blu-ray format has allowed Universal to truncate the number of discs and two platters are now missing from the Blu-ray box. This allows for a slimmer and nicer box and overall package. The sound has been given a high definition upgrade, although you would hardly notice any differences. Aside from not knowing what BD-Live features will eventually join the film, one of the U-Control features has been omitted. However, that was a worthless inclusion on the older HD-DVD release. Overall, I like the layout and packaging of this Blu-ray release a little more and while it doesn´t seem as impressive as it did on the stout HD-DVD format (which had full interactive support on launch), it remains a very nice set for its second outing.
Nikki Sanders (Ali Larter): Ali Larter is "Heroes" resident babe. Every show needs a gorgeous woman to succeed on prime time and the character of Nikki Sanders is the one written into this show. Sure, the cheerleader is attractive, but in many states, an interest in her is not legal. Nikki has a split personality. Her ´good´ side is that of an Internet stripper who makes money by charging clients by the minute. One of her clients is Hiro´s best friend Ando Masahashi (James Kyson Lee). Nikki borrowed money from Linderman to fund Micah´s private schooling and must make due while her husband is running from the law. She is a caring mother and does what she can. Unfortunately, her ´bad´ side is named Jessica and she is an assassin with superhuman strength and a penchant for violence and murder. The character´s duality causes problems with all of those around her and her husband D.L. must keep Micah away from her dangerous half-self. Eventually, Jessica becomes the dominant personality and comes under the employment of the darker forces in the show. Ali Larter is a lovely lady and for us male fans of the show, she serves as the series´ eye candy. Although her character has two personalities, I do not feel that Nikki/Jessica has been overly fleshed out.
Micah Sanders (Noah Gray-Cabey): Micah is the son of Nikki and D.L. and is a child prodigy. Micah has an uncanny ability to rebuild and repair technology. His intelligence is exceptional and although his grades are desired by the private school he is initially enrolled in, his mother does not make enough money to keep him there. Micah´s parents believe that they were experimented on by Mr. Linderman and that Micah is perhaps the result of those experiments. Aside from a laptop, Micah is able to fix telephones and other mechanical devices. Although the show does not exhibit other abilities or aspects afforded to Micah by his intelligence, he may be capable of even greater things that what have been revealed. I have to give some credit to young actor Noah Gray-Cabey. Hopefully, the second season will make his character a little more interesting.
Isaac Mendez (Santiago Cabrera): Isaac is an artist and a comic book writer that has the ability to detail the future through his works when he is under the influence of drugs. The comic book that leads Hiro on his quest came from Isaac. Paintings showing horrific events from around the world litter his studio. Isaac painted the picture of a New York City involved in a cataclysmic explosion and he painted a picture of Claire in peril. Isaac loves Simone, but his powers and drug addiction are troublesome. He views Peter as a rival for those affections, but works with the fellow hero to thwart the destruction of New York City and to save Claire from Sylar. Isaac is confronted by Hiro as well and eventually comes face-to-face with the villainous Sylar. Isaac was an intriguing character and I felt that Cabrera did a solid job of crafting a performance of a man with the torments and problems of Isaac.
Sylar (Zachary Quinto): Sylar begins his existence as Gabriel Gray, a talented watchmaker. He has lived a normal life, but has always strived to be something special. He is the first subject studied by DNA and Evolutionary scientist Chandra Suresh (Erick Avari). Suresh cannot find anything special with Sylar and gives up researching him. This angers Sylar and sends him on a spree where he kills those confirmed with powers from a stolen list and digests and masters their abilities. This reveals Sylar´s ´special´ ability and he continues to grow stronger and stronger as he kills more and more heroes. He is stopped by Peter Petrelli when he attempts to kill Claire. This sets in motion the events that make Sylar and Peter the good and evil rivals with similar abilities. Zachary Quinto is someone I feel will be a star. He has already secured a role as the next Mr. Spock in an upcoming "Star Trek" movie. His performance as Sylar is understated brilliance. After Matt Parker and Peter Petrelli, Sylar is perhaps my third favorite character of the show.
Video:
"Heroes" returns in high definition to the Blu-ray format sporting the same compression algorithm as its HD-DVD predecessor and I did not notice any discernable differences between the two releases. Since "Heroes" was initially released back on August 28, 2007 on the defunct format, a number of other shows have made their high definition debut. Some have looked better and some have looked worse. My first experience with television on high definition media was "Sopranos: Season Six: Part One" on Blu-ray and I felt "Heroes" looked better at that time. It still does. Television is still slowly making the transition to HDTV and more and more shows are being formatted for 1080 friendly releases. "Heroes" was one of the early pioneers and after a year this first season still holds up quite well. As I stated in the previous review, disc-based high definition is an improvement over broadcast HD. You don´t get the pixilation and other bandwidth and noise based problems that you get with broadcast. At least, I find all types of motion artifacts and whatnot with Comcast Digital HDTV. In a year this has not changed much and watching "Heroes" on a high definition disc is a marked improvement over broadcast.
Universal has released the show with a pristine 1.78:1/VC-1 transfer. The supplements and deleted scenes were not contained in high definition, but each episode and the show´s uncut pilot were all in glorious high definition. The show is a very nicely shot picture and although I don´t feel it is nearly as visually stunning as my beloved "Lost," it is among the better looking shows on television. About the only complaint with the visuals for the show is that high definition has a way of betraying budget-consciencious special effects shots. Regardless, "Heroes" is shot with enough detail and sufficient photography that the series can rival any number of more expensive Hollywood films and the show bests not just catalog releases on the Blu-ray format, but a few of the newer releases. We have been enjoying the benefits of High Definition media for quite some time now and have seen a number of inferior releases to "Heroes." This is a good looking release ever after one year.
The technical aspects of the release are solid. The colors are nicely saturated and come across effectively for each of the twenty three episodes. The reds of Claire´s cheerleader outfit nicely compare to the green grass under Hiro´s feet as he gazes into the sky and the show´s iconic solar eclipse. Each character exhibits natural skin coloring and this is holds up strongly regardless of the lighting Ali Larter is being shot in. The contrast and black levels of the show are strong as well. I did notice a few minor instances where the blacks could have been deeper, but I´m not going to get to fussy with a television show. Detail is very strong and a few of the exterior shots were especially nicely rendered in high definition. There are instances when the detail starts to revert back to looking like a DVD, but I chalk this up to the show being filmed for television and not the big screen. Every television show has these ´soft´ scenes and this one is no exception. Since the time I had written the HD-DVD review for "Heroes" I was able to witness "Lost" and felt that was only slightly superior to the "Heroes: The Complete First Season" transfer and since that time I can no longer conclude that this title is the best looking show on high definition. It still bests the "Sopranos."
Sound:
Universal has been shying away from Dolby Digital Plus since they moved over to Blu-ray and "Heroes" benefits from that change of philosophy with a nearly identical DTS-HD Lossless Master Audio 5.1 surround mix. The additional bandwidth doesn´t provide an experience much different than last year´s release, but perhaps the absolute best gear could churn up a noticeable difference. My equipment couldn´t sway me into feeling it is any better. Part of this is because you can never expect much out of the soundtrack of a television show. Although "Heroes" has been delivered with a decent 5.1 multi-channel soundtrack mix, the show is not very groundbreaking or earth shattering in its sonic capabilities. Much of this is in the sound design elements of the show. For one, television tends to have a flatter range and vocals that are more in-line with the volume level of everything else that is happening. Most viewers watch a show through their television speakers and this doesn´t translate to a full enveloping experience and shows need to be created to satisfy the general populace and not just those of us with capable and ready home theater setups.
That being said, "Heroes" is technically sound in the audio department. The show is primarily dialogue based and except for the finale, there is not a ton of action that takes place during the season. This is one of my gripes that I forgot to point out in my main review; "Heroes" is more drama than adventure. The "X-Files" had more action and "Lost" certainly has more action. However, aside from the random flight of a Petrelli brother or the sound of a subway car, there is not a lot of action to allow the Dolby Digital soundtrack of "Heroes" to possess much life. The show´s score is robust for a television production and very pleasing. The music spent more time in the rear channels than any of the sound effects. In general, the show´s sound is handled by the front three speakers. The center channel effectively contains and delivers the show´s all-important dialogue and it does it with aplomb. The rears do get used and there are a number of effects that populate them, but the surround channels seem to be used to get an audience´s attention and to not simply add to the listening experience.
Extras:
"Heroes" has been reformulated for its Blu-ray release. The episodes have been placed on just five platters instead of seven and special features have now been rearranged to feel a little more fitting and organized. The coveted U-Control functionality has been ported over to Blu-ray, with the exception of the "Helix Revealed" portion. However, the "Helix Revealed" U-Control feature on the HD-DVD disc was hardly notable and will not be missed. The Hero Connections was formerly called "Character Connections" and this feature details how each character related to each other. The chart becomes more convoluted as time passes, but it is an interesting feature. The second U-Control feature is the Artwork Presentations and all episodes aside from "Six Months Ago," "The Fix," "Company Man," "Run!" and "Landslide" features this U-Control option. This neat feature allows you to zoom in on Isaac´s work and look at the paintings closely. It is quite cool.
The U-Control functionality expands to include Picture-in-Picture video commentaries. Eight episodes utilize this ability and they are generally worth checking out. The third disc includes PiP functionality for the episodes "Godsend" and "The Fix." All of the episodes on both discs four and five have PiP enabled. This includes "Distractions," ".07%," "Five Years Gone," "The Hard Part," "Landslide" and "How to Stop an Exploding Man." Those that lend their time to the PiP commentaries varies from episode to episode and I was surprised to see that the show´s creator Tim Kring appears only on "How to Stop an Exploding Man." Still, diehard fans of "Heroes" will not want to miss out on this feature. Profile 1.1 is required for Picture-in-Picture to properly function.
Nearly all of the bonus content is now on the first disc. The most noteworthy of these pieces of value added content is the Unaired Pilot: The Tim Kring Cut (75:40) that features optional audio commentary with Tim Kring. This longer vision of the show´s beginning finds a few new characters and one of my favorites, Matt Parkman, introduced much earlier. Matt had a different wife in this unaired pilot and he hoped to be a SWAT officer and not a detective. A different ´Hero´ was introduced, one very similar to a character later introduced in the series. A few other minor subplots were also included, as well as some further fleshing out of Claire. I enjoyed the unaired pilot and felt it was a great supplement.
The featurettes that were formerly located on the seventh disc have been moved up to populate the first platter. The first, Making Of (9:59) provides a detailed a quick overview on the making of the show. This was a ten thousand foot view, but did contain a few nice nuggets of information. The second feature, Special Effects (8:44), was on the special effects and looked at the cataclysmic scene from the finale, as well as some other character based effects created for the show. This was perhaps the best of the vignettes. A third feature looks at The Stunts (10:21) and how the various characters handled their stunts. On Profile of Artist Tim Sale (11:25) Tim Sale, who painted the artwork associated with the character Isaac discusses his work on the show and a quartet of persons talks about the show´s score during The Score (8:57), the final vignette.
The first Blu-ray platter also includes BD-Live functionality for BD-Live Ready players. The packaging states that "Disc One is BD-Live Ready. Look for announcements at www.UniversalHiDef.com when Universal launches BD-Live." Unfortunately, folks it is currently not ready and at the time of this review you cannot access features that I will assume will include the Mind Reader, Download Center and Genetics Abilities Tests that were part of the HD-DVD release. This type of functionality was definitely where HD-DVD excelled and these features were available on that format at launch. Hopefully, they will appear in the near future, but until that time the information on those features will not be included on this review.
One of the main bonus features that is spread out over all discs is the 50 Deleted Scenes. I´ve counted them and there are exactly fifty scenes and if my math is correct the scenes run for roughly forty nine minutes and twenty seconds. The quality of this excised material varies and you really have to dig through this rather large collection of deleted scenes to find the real good moments that shouldn´t be missed. The first episode "Genesis" and the episode "Nothing to Hide" constitute roughly one third of all the bonus material, but many of the scenes in "Genesis" are worth looking at. Oddly, the fifth and final disc adds only two minutes and four seconds of deleted scenes to the mix. Here is a list of what each episode has to offer:
Disc 1 (14:39)
"Genesis" (8 scenes: 6:42)
"Don´t Look Back" (4 scenes: 3:39)
"One Giant Leap" (2 scenes: 4:17)
Disc 2 (15:57)
"Collision" (2 scenes: 0:52)
"Hiros" (3 scenes: 2:34)
"Nothing to Hide" (8 scenes: 9:36)
"Seven Minutes to Midnight" (3 scenes: 2:53)
Disc 3: (8:30)
"Homecoming" (1 scene: 0:59)
"Six Months Ago" (2 scenes: 2:31)
"Fallout" (1 scene: 1:45)
"Godsend" (2 scenes: 1:53)
"The Fix" (1 scene: 1:19)
Disc 4: (8:14)
"Distractions" (3 scenes: 2:14)
"Run!" (3 scenes: 3:25)
"Company Man" (3 scenes: 1:47)
"Parasite" (1 scene: 0:46)
Disc 5: (2:04)
".07%" (1 scene: 0:29)
"Five Years Gone" (1 scene: 0:42)
"Landslide" (1 scene: 0:53)
Closing:
"Heroes: The Complete First Season" returns again on high definition for its Blu-ray release. Universal has made some changes and the box set will once again test technology with support for both Profile 1.1 and Profile 2.0 players. However, at the time of this review´s writing the Profile 2.0 materials are not active. The added storage space of the Blu-ray format has allowed Universal to truncate the number of discs and two platters are now missing from the Blu-ray box. This allows for a slimmer and nicer box and overall package. The sound has been given a high definition upgrade, although you would hardly notice any differences. Aside from not knowing what BD-Live features will eventually join the film, one of the U-Control features has been omitted. However, that was a worthless inclusion on the older HD-DVD release. Overall, I like the layout and packaging of this Blu-ray release a little more and while it doesn´t seem as impressive as it did on the stout HD-DVD format (which had full interactive support on launch), it remains a very nice set for its second outing.
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[release]23605[/release]