Smallville - The Complete Fifth Season [HD DVD]

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Actor: Alison Mack, Erica Durance, Kristin Kreuk, Michael Rosenbaum, Tom Welling
Brand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 0
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled)
Format: AC-3, Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 926 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-11-28
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: Warner Home Entertainment

DVD Reviews of Smallville - The Complete Fifth Season [HD DVD]

DVD Review: Can You Say DEFECTIVE!!!
Summary: 1 Stars

I won't comment on the program because If I didn't enjoy it, I would not have purchased it. But there is something that bears mentioning, the defective HD-DVD 5th season. It's bad enough 3 of the 5 Smallville discs would not play, but when amazon replaced it with another box set, there was 1 disc that would not play. Well, I guess you could say it was an improvement...NOT!!! I won't beat up amazon too bad. It also bears mentioning they did give me 30 days to return the box set though they sent the replacement immediately. That's good customer service in my book. I only wished the product workmanship was equal to the service. I received an e-mail from customer service; to my surprise this experience with this HD-DVD box set was not limited to just me. Folks, I think we have a bone to pick with Warner Brothers as they produced this HD-DVD. Okay I'm off my soap box

DVD Review: Great season, but why not begin with the 1st season.
Summary: 5 Stars

I write these in all my reviews if you have not seen any episodes from this season please stop writing this and move on to someone who will not give you spoilers.

Like the title reads, I don't know why Warner Bros. began Smallville on HD-DVD and Blu Ray at Season Five instead of Season One but anyway this was a good season to review because this fifth season like a lot of other genre series that hit their fifth year (i.e. Angel and Charmed etc.) changed the dynamic of the series in a way that the series could almost never go back to things were before. As Special Features go this season doesn't have much for hardcore Smallville viewers. Deleted scenes on every disc and a couple commentaries and the making of the 100th episode (which is one of the best of the series). My favorite episode of this season is probably the episode Lexmas where the creators of Smallville do an obvious homage to It's A Wonderful Life but in a new way showing it from a villian's prospective. And really humanizing the character of Lex Luthor as a confused, angry, lost kid who really doesn't know what he wants other then to not lose anything in his life in particular the main woman in his life. This season also marks three high points for long time Superman fans like myself. One the final dissolvement of the Lex Luthor Clark Kent Friendship. We all knew this was going to happen ever since the first program in 2001 and I think the showdown between the two in the episode The Vessel really summaries everything the two wanted to say to each other and never had the courage to say to each other. The second high point is the introduction of General Zod and Brainaic. With the exception of Lex Luthor, Clark and Superman's main adversaries. When I heard the name "Zod" utter on the series I thought this was going to be a special season and with James Marsters playing Brainaic I thought that was a genius move and how these two characters really effected Clark's life will move onto the next season. Lastly, the lost of Johnathan Kent was another fans were expecting for quite a while. There is a discussion between fans whether Johnathan's death was caused by Jor-El's powers or by the fact that Johnathan's heart just gave out. I think it was a little of both. It had been established since Season Three when Johnathan took a dose of Clark's powers that his heart had been weakened ever since and this was the accumlination of that problem. Finally there is reason I am not going to talk about the Clana relationship because I don't think it is important to everything else going on this season. I will discuss it in my season six review of Smallville but this season it felt tacked on.

DVD Review: Spectacular Show, Lame Transfer
Summary: 4 Stars

Great season, though the end was not as grand as 5. Thre are so many things to love about this series: masterful use of saturated color (lending a comic book authenticity), witty scripting (moving beyond its original written form), and acting that is exact. The story telling in the Smallville series is some of the best out there and gets better with season 6: The Justice League, Chloey's powers, the Martian Manhunter, guest appearances like Lynda Carter...etc.

I'm dinging this one for poor video transfer quality. The season 5 regular DVD disc set is comparable in quality. It is actually less grainy though not as resolute in some scenes. I'm not an expert but the look of the season 6 video looks to be of a low bit rate and grainy. OK, grainy can be explained by the dark scenes where maybe they needed more exposure latitude, but the overall poor quality appears as though the season was produced exclusively for cable TV distibution which would require a low bitrate to save file size/bandwidth, then that hack job was slapped on an HD-DVD disc. The Blu-Ray version is worse IMO, so lets not make this an HD-DVD limitation issue.

Still worth buying of course, as it is worth twice the price I paid in entertainment... Lets hope they do a better job next time on the transfer and do justice to this American classic.

DVD Review: Smallville Amazing in HD
Summary: 5 Stars

If you have an HD DVD player, and you are a Smallville fan, season 5 is definitely worth purchasing in HD. The detail and color is amazing and the popup menu is really a great feature. I already have Season 6 on pre-order in HD!

DVD Review: No Main Menu?
Summary: 3 Stars

I'm not going to get into the plot/stories/arcs of Season 5 here, other than to say that as a huge fan of the show, in my opinion this is probably the weakest overall season in the series (it still has its share of good-to-great episodes of course, just not as many as other seasons). For Arrival (the first episode), you can watch a cool "picture in picture" commentary about the special effects of the episode, something unique to the HD-DVD. However, Arrival seems to be one of the poorest transfers on the set unfortunately, and I can't help but wonder if it has something to do with this "add on" attached to this episode, whether it's activated or not.

Issues with this HD-DVD set:

1. NO MAIN MENU. After the disc loads and you get past the usual screens (FBI warning, HD-DVD promos, etc) of whatever disc you put in, the first episode on it simply starts playing. There is NO main menu...a huge disappoint. If you're like me, you enjoy seeing the intros with its season-specific animations like DVD versions have. Why not include it? You can access a menu pop-up screen while an episode is playing or paused to get to options, other episodes, special features etc, which is a cool feature of HD-DVD, but without a cool main menu it doesn't really mean much, and you feel a bit cheated because you know that people with the DVD version have one. It couldn't have been that difficult to include the main menu, I have other HD-DVDs that do both -- the main menu AND the pop-up menu while the movie/show is playing (which is supposed to be a convenient feature because you don't have to leave the show). Most people like having the main menu and it's art/animation as an intro to the season/show, that's common sense so I'm not sure what the makers of this set were thinking. I feel pretty cheated not having it.

2. PICTURE QUALITY. While good, it is not as great a leap over Smallville DVD quality as I was expecting. As a reviewer below mentioned, it seems the earlier eps weren't transferred very well. There seemed to be minor grain noticeable sometimes, particularly in darker scenes. The bright scenes for the most part look fantastic. So again it is the darker scenes that seem to be the most problematic throughout the season (I've seen the first 8 eps so far). Since this is a 5 disc set, some discs (3 of the 5) have 5 eps on them instead of the usual 4 that we're used to with DVDs. I can't help but wonder if unneeded compression took place to fit 5 HD-sized eps on one disc and that any quality issues experienced on these discs are a result of this compression. Don't get me wrong, the picture is better than DVD, but it's not that much better, meaning either one of two things: Either they didn't do the best possible job with these HD transfers or they simply do an amazing job with their DVD transfers, compression and all.

3. LESS BOX ART. Not really major, however I'm sure important to many, including myself. If you're like me, part of the fun of collecting DVDs, especially TV DVDs, is having the box and its box art to look at. But with HD-DVD, the box is much smaller, and the inside is completely devoid of any art. DVD box sets have a lot more art. So while you gain in less space the box takes up, you lose out in something that makes collecting more fun -- the nifty artwork.

I truly hope the Season 6 HD release in an improvement over this one. Please, give us an animated main menu, and don't compress anything if you don't have to. Space out the eps on 6 discs instead of 5, I'm sure most people would prefer a better picture over saving a tiny bit of space (and it truly is tiny). I'm not sure what they can do about not sacrificing artwork, but I hope they try to figure something out -- because ultimately, why should people who are paying more for something (the HD version instead of DVD) be getting less.

****I recently purchased HEROES SEASON 1 on HD-DVD, and it is simply an amazing set. I would suggest Smallville follow their lead on how to produce a quality HD-DVD set. Lots of artwork, a complete main menu, basically all the bells and whistles you could ask for.

Description of Smallville - The Complete Fifth Season [HD DVD]

An astonishing season of destiny! Clark Kent now carries a full load of classes at Central Kansas U., but that's not all he carries. He carries the full weight of his - perhaps the world's - destiny. "We call this season Superman in Training," series co-creator Alfred Gough says. "Clark is going to accept his destiny." During this exciting pivotal season: The Fortress of Solitude rises. A spaceship mystery unfolds. A dark tragedy - one even Clark's powers can't prevent - strikes. These and more key elements of Superman lore fall into place.

Consistently solid with some major developments, the fifth season of Smallville kicks the characters off to college, but not before finishing the cataclysmic disaster that ended the fourth season. With Chloe transported to the Arctic Circle and Kryptonian supervillains in town, Clark (Tom Welling) is in the Fortress of Solitude meeting Jor-El (voiced by Terence Stamp). He gives up his powers, but to get them back will cost him the life of someone he loves.

The even bigger development is that Clark and Lana (Kristin Kreuk) finally give up their dalliances with others and become an official couple. That means the other girls in Clark's life become fifth and sixth wheels, so Chloe (Allison Mack) reveals the secret she's been keeping from Clark and becomes a best pal. Super-gorgeous Lois's (Erica Durance, now part of the opening credits) banter with Clark loses its bite without any sexual tension so instead she meets Arthur "AC" Curry, a fantastic swimmer who has an eye for Lois and an accusing one toward Lex (Michael Rosenbaum) and LutherCorp. He's not the only one; Clark's Central Kansas A&M professor, Milton Fine (James Marsters) hires Clark to help him on his project, an expose of LutherCorp. Lex is the pivotal character of the season. His relationship with his best friend, Clark, now history, Lex has a Christmas Carol-type dream in which he sees himself in a law-abiding--and happy--life. (That episode, "Lexmas," also has some amusing interplay involving Clark and Chloe.) Undeterred, he decides on a life of power and dives into a state senate race against Jonathan Kent with gusto, though a fanatical Lex supporter turns the race into a literal one for life and death. Lionel Luthor (John Glover) also makes a strong comeback in this season, pulling unseen levers and making everyone wonder exactly what he knows.

There's some fun. "Thirst" is a tribute to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and another DC Comics character, Cyborg (Teen Titans), appears. Carrie Fisher plays Chloe's editor at The Daily Planet, and "Exposed" reunites Schneider with former Dukes of Hazzard costar Tom Wopat, and the two go peeling out in a vehicle. But things come to a head in the series 100th episode, when Jor-El's prediction comes to pass and splintered relationships end up leading in unexpected directions. Then in the season finale's cliffhanger, Clark has to face three of his enemies. --David Horiuchi

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Television > Smallville

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