Silicon Valley: The Complete Third Season (Blu-ray Review) at Why So Blu?

Silicon Valley: The Complete Third Season (Blu-ray Review)

April 2nd, 2017 by Brian White

Silicon Valley Complete Third Season Blu-ray I’m going to start this one by giving you the same ramble I did last year. Working in the IT industry myself I can’t tell you what a breath of fresh air it is to see people going through the same stress, trials and tribulations as myself in the industry. I may not be involved directly in a tech startup company, but I know how things work in corporate America/Silicon Valley and sometimes HBO’s hit comedy series Silicon Valley hits oh so close to home for me. You can read all about my take on Season One in my 2014 Blu-ray review over here and Season Two here. However, today we’re here to discuss everything Season Three, which is making its Blu-ray debut on April 11th. So here we go! Let’s SWOT things out down below.

Season

Once again Mike Judge and Alec Berg bring this Emmy dominated comedy back to HBO in its third season. And just like the last season did this one picks up right where we left off the previous year. So if you haven’t seen Season Two yet, you’ve been warned. I’m going to spoil it for you right here. This is your last chance to stop reading. Okay. Don’t say I didn’t tell you so. Last season’s conclusion saw our favorite fictitious startup company, Pied Piper, celebrating a legal victory right while the lovable and very gullible CEO, Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middletech), was stripped of his title and offered the role of CTO. This ultimately sees him and his team, Erlich (T.J. Miller), Jared (Zach Woods), Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) and Gilfoyle (Martin Starr), under the reigns of a no-nonsense CEO hellbent on transforming their loose work culture into that dread c-word…CORPORATE. I guess you could also throw out another c-word too such as COMMERCE, but I digress.

So before we move on I also wanted to throw out the fact that Season 3 of this HBO series was its most-nominated season to date. It collected 11 Emmy nominations including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series (Thomas Middleditch). Believe it or not, but it also boasted a 100% “Fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. If you don’t believe me, you can check it out right here. How do you like those tomatoes? That’s a lot of tomatoes!

So not to beat a dead horse, but let’s go over some basics of this show once again before we jump right into all the events of Season Three. Silicon Valley is an American comedy television series created by Mike Judge and a few others. The series focuses on six young men who initially founded a startup company in…you guessed it… Silicon Valley, which for anybody that doesn’t know is in Northern California. The series premiered on April 6, 2014, on HBO and consisted of only eight episodes. Due to its overwhelming success HBO renewed the series for four seasons now, making it the greatest stay-at home date night in combination with Game of Thrones, which it originally followed (pretty much guaranteeing itself an audience). This year it will be different with the fourth season since Game of Thrones is MIA until the summertime.

Now finally before we go on let’s recap the obvious. Of course I’m talking once again about the need to reintroduce the major players…the cast…of the series. Thomas Middleditch is our main protagonist Richard Hendricks, a Stanford University dropout and ex-coder at tech giant Hooli, who created the Pied Piper compression application, the reason we’re all here. T. J. Miller, probably the most recognizable cast member from Deadpool, stars as Erlich Bachman, an arrogant entrepreneur who used to own 10% of Pied Piper and more. Josh Brener returns as Nelson “Big Head” Bighetti who hilariously comes into money this year with his departure from Hooli.

Three more members of Richard’s troupe also return, Martin Starr as Bertram Gilfoyle, a LaVeyan Satanist programmer and Canadian illegal immigrant, Kumail Nanjiani as Dinesh Chugtai, a talented programmer originally from Karachi, Pakistan who is typically the victim of Gilfoyle’s embarrassing games and pranks, and my personal favorite, the very innocent looking Zach Woods as Donald “Jared” Dunn, an ex-employee of Hooli who quit the company (he probably regrets this now) in order to originally join the Pied Piper team as its CFO and business advisor. The beautiful Amanda Crew is back as Monica Hall, an employee of Raviga Capital and ex-assistant to both Peter Gregory, whom we will talk about down below, and later Laurie Bream (Suzanne Cryer). Last but certainly not least, the charismatic leader of Hooli, Matt Ross as Gavin Belson, serves as our season’s main antogonist once again with an additional challenge this time out from Jack Barker (Stephen Tobolowsky), Pied Piper’s new CEO (Season Two spoiler!).

So now that we have all the trivial housekeeping accounted for let’s start recapping Season Three. You ready? Of course you are! Season Three picks up right where the last one left off Richard picking up as CTO of Pied Piper instead of CEO. Despite his disappointment in everything he decides to give it a go, but struggles under Jack Barker’s leadership. The company is becoming more and more corporate everyday and Richard and gang completely disagrees with the new direction and business model. Long story short Richard complains and Jack gets outed, but Raviga’s Laurie leaves the CEO seat empty for now. Is your head spinning yet? That’s simply the start of problems here. Ha ha.

Meanwhile Hooli’s Galvin Belson is making major changes in his business too by first firing the entire Nucleus team only to hire them all back accidentally in a purchase of Endframe, a company which essentially stole Richard’s compression algorithm. Remember I said Big Head comes into money? Well Erlich helps him spend it and he spends it ALL. Needless to say they have a bit of money troubles. Young fools! Eventually under the leadership of Richard once again the Pied Piper application is finally released, but are users really crazy about it? This much and so much more goes down in Season Three of the hilarious Silicon Valley. I don’t want to spoil all the fun. After all the real fun in all of this is finding out by watching what all goes down. I think I told you enough, don’t you think?

If all of this above did not whet your appetite to give Season Three a watch, then I’m not doing my job as one of the world’s most prolific Blu-ray reviewers. Ha ha. Trust me the hilariousness of it all doesn’t end where I left off. However, what I would love to fill you in on is how things look and sound in this Blu-ray release. Read on to find out…

Video

Once again, things look really good here in Silicon Valley‘s third outing now on the Blu-ray format. I completely disagree with those who clamor that this is a show only worth owning on DVD. I for one can’t wait for the eventual death of that hideous SD format. After all, we’re in the age of HD and 4K now!

Encoding: AVC MPEG-4
Resolution: 1080p
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Clarity/Detail: Like in the previous seasons of HBO’s Silicon Valley on Blu-ray, detail is dominant and prominent throughout here in this Blu-presentation. The textures, hair, stubble, computer graphics and even fabrics and stockings in clothing all jump right off the screen at you in the utmost of sharpness and clarity. There’s no escaping how razor sharp this one looks. The extreme clarity also makes the horse sex scene that much more disturbing. Oh I did not tell you about that one up above, huh? You may need to cover your eyes during those scenes because you cannot unsee what you have seen. Backgrounds and set environments are also crystal clear and chiseled throughout. Take the chiseled stonework for example in Bachman’s house where the old Pied Piper logo hangs and you’ll completely understand where I’m coming from.
Depth: Due to the extreme levels of detail and clarity in this one, foreground characters literally pop off the screen with the utmost of three-dimensional qualities leaving the background like a deep dish pizza in terms of depth of field. All one needs to do is look at the vastness at the new, spacious offices of Pied Piper to appreciate how deep and wide things are here.
Black Levels: The black levels are all deep and gorgeously inky throughout. Although here is one of those scenarios where I’m really getting spoiled by HDR in 4K presentations as nighttime scenes in the darkness does not reveal all the level of clarity I’m now used to.
Color Reproduction: The colors are vivid, bold and sitcom bright throughout. Colors such as the reds and prison oranges pop with priority. Shots either outside in sunny California or properly lit look like a million bucks. I’m just saying!
Flesh Tones: The skin tones are all lifelike and natural. Like in the previous two seasons, the pasty white skin of all the nerdy tech characters is completely authentic. Haha.
Noise/Artifacts: I did not notice any noise or unwanted artifacts that would keep you from ever enjoying this bright, vivacious and mostly pristine presentation.

Audio

For a comedy, things are pretty much what you would expect (being top heavy) and as a result are status quo in this Blu-ray’s audio presentation.

Audio Format(s): English 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio, French 5.1 DTS, Latin Spanish 2.0 DTS
Subtitles: English SDH, French, Latin, Spanish, Danish, Finnish, Norwegian, Swedish
Dynamics: The dynamics are well developed and placed here in Silicon Valley on Blu-ray. From the hustle and bustle of endlessly pecking away on computer keyboards to crinkling and throwing away paper, everything is brought to life in this Blu-ray presentation with the utmost of authenticity and clarity just like you were really going through all the trials and tribulations of this very risky tech startup company. The only catch is things are really top heavy here.
Low Frequency Extension: You really only notice the subwoofer pumping in moments where it’s deserving or necessary, and in moments such as where the score or soundtrack warrant the LFE channel as permissible. It’s a comedy, folks. Relax! You’re really not losing out on anything here.
Surround Sound Presentation: Besides the LFE presentation, this is probably the only area I would have loved to have hear more of. You hear things in the rear speakers such as score, ambience, etc., but it would be so awesome if it was more prominent. Since I’m judging this based on it being a situational comedy, I’m being very generous here. Just don’t expect anything over the top. Sometimes you need to check your receiver to make sure there’s surround sound being decoded.
Dialogue Reproduction: The dialog is loud, clear and intelligible throughout here. Hallelujah too because the dialogue is what makes this show tick and you thankfully hear every second of it with the utmost of clarity.

Extras

Silicon Valley: The Complete Third Season arrives on Blu-ray featuring all ten Season 3 episodes and hilarious deleted scenes. In addition to the below Blu-ray extras that we’ll dissect in detail, you can always count on HBO to deliver you not only the iTunes Digital Copies of the entire series, but also the UltraViolet versions too. How’s that for maximum bang for your buck? I know! It’s stupendous you’re probably saying to yourself, and you’re absolutely right! Just for your knowledge, episodes 1-5 are found on Blu-ray disc #1 while 6-10 are on the second disc, but for now let’s take a closer look at the supplemental extras you’ll find in this two disc set. Just an FYI though you won’t find any audio commentaries or featurettes here like in the past Blu-ray season sets. Sadly all you get is some deleted scenes to dazzle yourselves with here.

Deleted Scenes (HD) – Although not every episode has them, deleted scenes are available on both discs and are selectable either by the episode or via a play all selection. The episodes where there are deleted scenes to be found are 1, 4 and 6. Sadly that’s it folks!

Summary

So there you have it ladies and gentlemen. In summary, I think I’ve gave you more than enough reasons to arm yourself with in the knowledge that HBO’s Silicon Valley The Complete Third Season is exactly what you’re looking for to spend your hard earned money on. From a good time to be had with it all to a Blu-ray that knocks it out of Petco Park with all the technical mumbo jumbo, this is the Blu-ray 2-disc set you’re looking for this April. Only one thing remains now between you and you’re dream of achieving utter happiness and eternal bliss. You just need to click the pre-order link below to bring yourself one step closer to making these dreams of happiness an honest to God reality. Come on. It’s easy to do. Everyone’s doing it. Just click on the Amazon graphic below. Move that mouse cursor and/or touch it. Done deal! Thanks for reading and ultimately your support too.

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